Kill Your X Chapter 102

Seo Seunghan, after admitting that his sense of taste was beyond simply dull, began preparing meals centered around simple recipes. Sandwiches were one of the dishes he was confident in.

[I miss you, Sunbae]

[Are you awake?]

[Are you working out now?]

[I think I forgot to put sauce on the sandwich]

I checked the messages he’d sent while having my late meal. He’d sent them less than an hour after leaving the house.

“He’s cute enough to die for.”

I replied with a pleased smile.

[I miss you too]

He must have been in the middle of his major class, but a reply came back immediately.

[Should I skip class?]

[You can’t do that. Do you want to bomb your exam?]

[Even if I do, I won’t be the only one. It feels like I’m the only one awake in this lecture hall right now.]

For a moment, a wicked thought crossed my mind: ‘Should I just tell him to mess up moderately this time?’ It was because I remembered something he had said before.

Seo Seunghan, who never had any romantic notions about campus life to begin with, truly led a school life faithful to attending lectures. He said that while there was no need to ignore other students when they tried to talk to him, he didn’t see any reason to become close with them either. He went so far as to give them a harsh evaluation, saying they were all unnecessarily distractible and talked too much.

Club activities and festivals, things that would typically interest a college freshman, also failed to capture his attention. Among the students, each busy enjoying their youth, it was a foreseeable outcome that his relatively diligent attendance in lectures would catch the professor’s eye.

‘You entered school at a late age and show great enthusiasm for your studies. Have you ever thought about coming to graduate school?’

I still remember the shock of the day Seo Seunghan relayed those words to me verbatim. Seeing my expression turn cold and stiff, he immediately said he wouldn’t go.

‘No. It’s your life, if you want to go to grad school, you should.’

‘I don’t really have any thoughts on it. But do you hate me going to school that much?’

‘It’s not the school that’s the problem. It’s grad school.’

‘The professor seemed like a good person.’

‘Seunghan. Professors trying to hook a new graduate student are always kind. They wouldn’t come otherwise.’

He had only learned how to launder money for the organization or clean up bloody work sites; he was ignorant about graduate school, another jungle of society.

“For someone to be this naive…”

Looks like I’ll have to keep him and live with him for the rest of my life.

I planted a small kiss on the message that was urging for a reply. Today, too, was off to a good start.

✽✽✽

Three-thirty in the afternoon. At what could be considered an ambiguous time, I went to work. Unless the weather was rough, I usually walked to my workplace. It wasn’t very close, a thirty-minute walk, but the parking space near the office was limited, so this way was less stressful.

Passing through the main commercial district and entering the last alley, a standalone building appears. A book cafe with a tranquil atmosphere, renovated from a two-story house. It is my new nest, which just took its first step last year.

‘Welcome.’

As I entered, the employee guarding the cafe greeted me by just mouthing the words. I, too, waved my hand without speaking. The reason we have such a peculiar way of communicating is because the establishment’s rule is ‘silence.’

My fame played a part in establishing the concept of ‘Reading in Silence.’

Two years ago from now, I did an interview with a media company. It was the result of accepting, after much deliberation, a suggestion from a department Sunbae with whom I had been quite close during my university days.

Although the firepower had greatly diminished compared to when the incident was at its peak, articles about me were still occasionally posted online. At first, they had ordinary titles like ‘Song Gyujin’s Current Status,’ but as if the writer also knew the topic had lost its buzz, they gradually became more provocative, like ‘Current Status of the Former Police Commissioner’s Son Who Sent His Own Dad to His Grave.’ The fact that the content was mixed with ridiculous fabrications was also a problem.

I had been hiding all this time, but for Seo Seunghan’s sake, I thought it would be better to just step forward and face it once. He had finally managed to enjoy an ordinary life, and I really didn’t want another spark of trouble to fly into his life because of me.

Although I had mustered up a lot of courage, the interview content was actually nothing special.

[It took me some time to accept it. The fact that there was a big problem with my past memories related to my father. I thought about it for a very long time… but since several people had died, I believed it was right to reveal the truth, even now.]

I’m sure there were better ways to expose the truth, but I confessed honestly that, being in a state of having half-lost my mind at the time, that was the best I could do.

I had braced myself for malicious comments of similar intensity as before, but the public’s reaction was surprisingly lenient. The reason for it was a bit absurd.

‘Because I’ve been unemployed ever since that incident, and I’ve lost contact with my other family members? Did a sympathetic public opinion really form because of these words?’

After tearing me apart like that, I truly couldn’t understand it.

‘That’s the dual nature of human beings. The reason you received an excessive amount of hate before, Sunbae, was because from others’ perspective, you didn’t seem to be lacking anything. Especially the image of you defined by the media was the very epitome of a golden-spoon young master. For such a person to have now lost virtually everything. From the perspective of those who cursed you, the reason to slander you has disappeared.’

Even after listening to Hyun Jin’s kind explanation, it didn’t really sink in, but I felt a sense of relief after officially stating my position once.

After finishing one big piece of homework, I finally began to make concrete plans for the future. Putting aside the fact that I was born with a needlessly diligent personality, looking back, I think I wanted to prove my social usefulness in some way.

I was curious if I could mix with people again and do something, if it would be possible for me to live an ordinary life like others from now on.

I considered the option of getting a job at a library again, but I wasn’t keen on it, so I shifted my direction slightly. I would go into a similar line of work, but in a way that I could take full responsibility for any problems that arose. Hoping that no one else would suffer great harm because of me anymore, I became a book cafe owner.

While contemplating the management style, what I came up with was a combination of the silence concept and a 100% reservation system. The latter was particularly effective; the requirement to make an internet reservation to visit the book cafe also served as a form of identity verification.

Fortunately, after the cafe opened, no strange people came to visit. It might have been because most of the practical work was left to the staff, and even when I came to work, I often stayed in the second-floor office.

Due to the owner’s lax management, the book cafe’s profitability was disastrous, but my job satisfaction was high. It wasn’t a business I started for money in the first place.

In the end, I feel that I did a very good job mustering my courage. Just the act of facing a stranger to take a drink order, or telling someone that a certain book is on that shelf over there, gave me a full sense of accomplishment. The things that were so natural in the past that I didn’t attach meaning to each one were now what let me breathe.

The tension that had filled my body when I stayed at the cafe gradually eased over time. Nowadays, my social skills have leveled up(?) to the point where I can show obvious delight when I see a regular customer.

It was thanks to Seo Seunghan, my friends, and my old work colleagues taking turns to cheer me on, on days when I would shrink for no reason.

That day, too, I went up to the second floor and took care of backlogged tasks, such as organizing a list of new books to purchase. There was still time left after that, so I read a few dozen more pages of a book I had recently started.

Completely immersed in the book, I suddenly snapped back to my senses. It was dark outside the window. It was about time to start closing the cafe.

Stretching my stiff body from sitting for a long time, I went down to the first floor. I thought the employees would have already gone home, but the lights inside were brightly lit. I looked around with a sense of wonder when I heard whispering voices coming from the back door.

“What are you all doing over there?”

“Ah, Sir. It’s just that…”

One of the employees moved aside slightly with a troubled look on their face. I froze at the scene that followed.