Life, Once Again!

“I know, sorry.
It looks like I was out of it because of the heat,” Daemyung made an excuse.

Iseul did not drag things on with Daemyung either.
Her arrows were pointed at Dowook, yet Dowook just picked his ears as he moved his spoon.

“Han Maru, you let them be because you didn’t know, right?”

Maru, who was eating some tofu, shook his head.

“You knew?”

“I did.”

“Then why didn’t you stop them? What were you going to do if the teachers found out?”

“Things like this are okay once in a while, right? It’s impulsive and thrilling.”

“What?”

Iseul looked at him with a shocked expression.
Everyone else did the same.

“Why are you saying something that Dojin might say?” Dowook asked as he scanned Maru from top to bottom.

Maru pressed Dowook’s cheek with his finger to turn his head away.

“Well, I guess it was strange that everything clicked together.
You’re the type to hold everyone back.
As for Daemyung, he’s the type to go with the flow if we shake him up a little,” Dojin said.

“The weather was way too hot.
I felt like falling over if I stayed any longer, so since you were doing it, I even felt grateful.”

“It feels strange when you say stuff like that.”

Maru shrugged at Iseul.

“I can’t interfere with my friends when they are saying that they are going to do things together.
Also, the risk of being found out was small.
The weather was hot enough that it wouldn’t be strange if someone fell over, and the principal’s speech was no different from torture.
If Dojin didn’t act like he collapsed, maybe we would’ve seen a real heatstroke patient.
Iseul, there are quite a few girls in your class, right? Some of them should have said that they felt dizzy, you know?”

“That’s true, but it was still too reckless.”

“When else would I do something as reckless as this?”

“Did something happen to you over the summer? Or did I miss out on practice too much? Daemyung, was he always like this?”

Everyone’s focus was directed to Daemyung, Daemyung, who was putting laver on his rice, thought a little before speaking,

“Maru did change a little.
He treats his juniors well and teaches them acting in his spare time.
I think he’s no longer the guy who drew the line and will not interfere with anything.
He jokes and smiles a lot now.”

“Han Maru, you became human now, eh? You were such an outsider in your first year.”

Maru looked at Iseul, who patted his head as though she was proud of his growth, before speaking,

“Maybe I finally feel like I understand high school students? These days, I feel a lot younger.”

“Now of all times? We talked about this amongst ourselves, but you did seem like an old dude.”

“Dojin, Daemyung.
That’s how you saw me all this time?”

Dojin and Daemyung nodded without the slightest bit of hesitation.
Maru made a bitter smile.
He might be mature on the inside, but he looked like a completely normal high school student on the outside, and yet they still thought he was an old dude.
He would much like the expression ‘mature’ or ‘composed’ instead.
Or maybe even ‘kkondae’[1] instead.
Kkondae felt like it was the essence of survival in society, so it didn’t make him feel bad to be described as one.

“That’s unfortunate.
I took care of you guys so much too.”

“I know.
I do know that, but during the beginning of first year, you definitely had a stiff side to you.
You didn’t have a good relationship with the seniors either.
When I found out that you sacrificed yourself for the acting club, I honestly felt really disappointed.
You never talk about your own worries yet you care about the ones around you.
That’s not what being friends is about, is it?”

Dojin drank some water after saying those words.
Maru faintly smiled.

“In that sense,  I really like your attitude recently.
You moderately play around and joke around.
Before you were like – how should I put it? – distant? I felt something like that, but you don’t feel like that these days.
Though, you’re still hella smart.”

“That’s strange.
I’ve been treating you all with my whole heart since the beginning.”

Dowook said ‘bullshit’ in a small voice next to him.
Everyone chuckled.
Maru looked at them composedly.
Everyone had their circumstances, but they had smiles that were truthful.
He felt relieved when he thought that he had contributed to those smiles.
Distant, huh.
Looking back, he felt like he was rushing ahead too much.
It would’ve been fine to look around him from time to time and get some more breathing room.
When he thought about it now, he only wondered why he was so hung up on success.
What good would it be if his life after succeeding was lonely? Matching his steps with his friends, who were sharing his time, was probably just as important as success.

For a brief moment, he was reminded of a railroad that went straight towards success.
For a strange reason, what lied at the end was not success but something else.
Something more important than success, and something that was founded on success seemed to lie at the end of the rail, but even if he focused, nothing specific came to mind.

“What are you thinking about?” Iseul asked.

Maru talked about what he just thought in his mind,

“It just suddenly came to mind, but why do we need to be successful?”

“Is there a reason to need to be successful? It’s better than failing.
If you fail, your life will be doomed,” Dowook said in a grumbling tone.

Daemyung replied that it was because success felt good.

“Like what Doowok said, don’t you think it’s because success is better than failure? If you ask me precisely why people need to be successful, I think it’ll be hard to answer.”

That was Iseul’s reply.
Just as everyone was coming to similar conclusions, Dojin spoke as he grabbed the yoghurt that came out as dessert,

“Only if I become successful would I not make the woman I love suffer.”

Iseul asked if that woman was her with an evil grin on her face, but Dojin refrained from answering.
Maru looked at the two quarreling.
They were a couple that did not show any signs of breaking up.
For a brief moment, he felt dizzy as though he woke up with a hangover.
Maru drank some water.
Amidst the fading pain, blurry figures could be seen.
A young woman and a little girl were waving at him as they looked at him.

“Hey, do you feel sick?” Dowook asked as he grabbed his shoulder.

Maru smiled and shook his head.

“Looks like I basked in the sun too much in the morning.”

“Just eat your stuff and sleep.
That’s the best cure.”

“Couldn’t find a better answer.”

Maru put the last spoon of rice in his mouth.