How to Survive the Horror Novel I Wrote
Chapter 16
Mo Yeyeon was not at her desk.
She was probably still eating lunch or having coffee with close colleagues. Or perhaps she was talking behind my back even now.
Planning to wait until she returned, I pulled up a spare chair and sat down, drawing cold, sharp glares from the few teachers remaining in the second-grade Teachers’ Room.
I gritted my teeth and held my ground. Those stinging stares pricked like thorns straight into my chest, but I couldn’t back down here.
I wasn’t a gold digger. In all my life, I had never been anything close to one. Far from leeching off men, I had never even been in a proper relationship.
Mo Yeyeon might have had the right to reproach me for my mistake, but she had no right to frame me with slander.
A moment later, Mo Yeyeon walked into the second-grade Teachers’ Room holding a toothbrush case. I rose from my seat.
The moment she saw me, her face twisted in an instant scowl. But she quickly pretended not to see me and walked back to her desk.
“Teacher Ye-yeon. Can we talk for a moment?”
Without even looking at me, Mo Yeyeon tossed the toothbrush case into her drawer and retorted:
“I believe I told you last time. I have nothing to say to you, Teacher Ji-an.”
Rage boiled inside me. Heat surged to my head, flushing my face, while my heart pounded like a raging bull.
Nothing to say to me, yet you have plenty to say about me to others?
Still, with Mo Yeyeon commanding public opinion, losing my temper would do me no good.
I forced myself to remain calm and pressed her.
“I was in the wrong about the blind date, and I am still truly sorry for that. But why are you making up things that never happened?”
Only then did Mo Yeyeon look up at me.
Then, with utter shamelessness, she played dumb.
“When did I ever? I did no such thing.”
“A student told me. There’s a rumor going around that I string rich men along, that I’m a gold digger.”
“Isn’t that just how rumors are?”
After that spiteful sneer, Mo Yeyeon snapped as if she were the aggrieved party.
“Besides, did I spread that rumor? Why are you coming at me like this?”
Because you’re the one who spread it.
Suppressing the anger boiling to the crown of my head, I spoke evenly.
“I have ears too. Everything you’ve been saying reaches me.”
“What did I say?”
“You said I was the one who begged you for a blind date.”
Flinching slightly, Mo Yeyeon turned the tables and raised her voice.
“You did!”
“When did I? I turned it down, but you kept insisting over and over.”
“You’re ridiculous, Teacher Ji-an. What changes if you go back on your word now?”
Mo Yeyeon raised her voice even louder, rattling off lies.
“When did I ever go back on my word—”
“You’re doing it right now, right this second! Teacher Ji-an, did you or did you not ask me to set you up on a blind date?”
“I didn’t.”
“See! You did, and now you’re denying it through your teeth! When I have clear proof right here!”
Mo Yeyeon thrust her phone out, showing a chat screen.
「Teacher Ji-an! 12 o’clock at ○○ Restaurant. Have fun on your date~.」
「Ha Ji-an: Thank you.」
It was nothing more than a text informing me of the time and location and my brief reply of gratitude, yet she flaunted it as if it were undeniable proof.
“Both of you, stop it. Especially you, Teacher Ji-an. Did you really have to come all the way to the second-grade office to pick a fight?”
A teacher stepped in as if to break us up, snapping with a displeased look.
Who was it that said whoever shouts loudest in Korea wins? How true it was. Every teacher around us was glaring at only me.
Not a single person believed my words. Tightening my lips, I turned away.
They were people who wouldn’t believe me no matter what I said anyway.
Two years until the next transfer. The thought of having to endure this humiliation for two whole years made me want to quit teaching all the more desperately.
That evening, I dragged my unexploded shell of a body home from work.
The unreleased fury seemed to detonate repeatedly inside me, scorching my insides to ash.
I had thought Ugeum would be waiting at home, or would at least drop by later to see me, but for some reason, he never showed up.
Even as the Cursed Keyboard typed away.
Even after he had told me yesterday that he loved me.
Worried that he might have gone after that drug dealer from before, I checked the manuscript, only to find the situation was even worse.
At home, Ugeum was reading the Night Series, cross-referencing the novel’s contents with his own memories—even taking notes in a notebook.
And seeing that it matched his memories with a hundred percent accuracy, he was harboring fierce suspicion and burning hostility toward the author.
A sharp ache jabbed the back of my neck at the sight. A stress-induced headache.
It felt as if a miniature Ju Ugeum and a miniature Mo Yeyeon were each holding invisible awls, stabbing the base of my skull over and over.
Every single one of them was just dying to devour me whole.
I took some headache medicine and went to bed early.
And then, I dreamed of the past.
An old nightmare that had haunted me for so long.
“Hey.”
Poke.
Someone prodded my shoulder as I lay slouched over my desk.
“Gaebul.”
Poke.
“Stop pretending to sleep and get up.”
Poke.
“What is it?”
When I reluctantly lifted my head, I saw the bullies surrounding me with menacing scowls. My stomach instantly dropped.
“I heard you were flirting with my boyfriend yesterday. My friend saw you.”
Standing in the center, Kkaennipmeori glared with wide, threatening eyes as she interrogated me.
Yesterday.
Yesterday, my Stepfather had beaten me half to death.
Terrified that I would genuinely die if the beating continued, I had fled the house.
In the dead of night, amidst a torrential downpour, I had wandered through the rain weeping, without an umbrella. Having no money, I couldn’t even go inside anywhere.
Shaking from the bitter cold, the building I ducked into to escape the rain happened to be a cram school.
Students coming out after studying late passed by, giving strange looks to the girl shivering at the entrance, soaked to the bone.
Among them, a male student bought me a clear plastic umbrella. But it hadn’t been a gift—it was charity.
I couldn’t clearly recall his face, his voice, or what he was wearing, but one thing remained vivid in my mind: his eyes.
The way he looked at me with pure pity.
He must have been her boyfriend.
“It wasn’t anything like that.”
I calmly explained what had happened, but Kkaennipmeori had a knack for twisting people’s words.
“So you played the pity card to flirt with him. Getting soaked in the rain on purpose, huh?”
I couldn’t fathom it at all. How on earth could anyone interpret it that way?
It was utterly absurd and unfair.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“What do you mean, no? A beggar like you pulling every trick just to get attention. Nobody told you to eat outside, but you’re always out eating on the bleachers. You treat the nurse’s office like your personal room. And while everyone else wears short summer uniforms, you wearing a long-sleeved blouse all by yourself is all part of your little show too!”
Kkaennipmeori shoved my shoulder, screaming in fury.
A show.
The moment I heard that word, something snapped inside my head. An uncontrollable blaze erupted through my eyes, nose, and mouth.
“It’s not a show!”
I leaped to my feet and yanked up both sleeves. In doing so, I exposed my shameful secret: both arms mottled and stained with black, blue, and violent purple bruises.
Though what I revealed was merely the tip of the iceberg, audible gasps echoed around the room. Even Kkaennipmeori looked struck dumb.
Watching sympathy and revulsion flicker across the other kids’ faces, I snarled in pure, venomous spite:
“Could you put on a show like this?”
Some people would rather die than admit they were wrong. Kkaennipmeori was one of them. Even after seeing the overwhelming traces of violence all over my body, she clung stubbornly to her wild delusions.
“…Just because you get beaten at home means you can hit on someone else’s boyfriend? Who do you think you are, raising your voice at me!”
Kkaennipmeori slapped me across the face without warning. Sparks flashed before my eyes, but the blow wasn’t even hard enough to turn my head.
Compared to my Stepfather’s heavy, iron-pot-lid hands, it was laughable.
The realization flipped a switch in my brain. The bullies surrounding me weren’t scary in the slightest.
Letting out a savage shriek, I lunged at Kkaennipmeori. It was the very first time in my life I had ever fought back.
I beat Kkaennipmeori just as my Stepfather had taught me. I seized her by the hair and slapped her across the face.
Kkaennipmeori screamed, and the other delinquents cursed vilely as they tore me off her.
I was thrown to the Classroom floor, battered by a barrage of kicks and punches.
Taking hits from so many people on a body already covered in bruises hurt even worse.
Yet it was bearable. As it turned out, I could take a beating quite well—hardened, apparently, by the countless beatings from my Stepfather.
I grabbed one of the legs kicking into me and bit down with all my might.
The girl I bit shrieked and collapsed. While the others scrambled to help her up, I scrambled back to my feet and threw a fist into the nearest face.
In doing so, I proved firsthand that even a trodden worm will turn. And then, along with the bullies, I was dragged to the Teachers’ Room.
Standing in a line with the delinquents in front of our homeroom teacher, I stared down at my toes. It felt utterly unfair that I was the one hauled in as well.
The homeroom teacher knew everything. That I was being abused at home, and that I was being bullied in class. Yet despite knowing all of it, she took none of it into account.
She summoned everyone’s parents. I was no exception.
“Hello. Is this Ji-an’s father? I am Ji-an’s homeroom teacher. Today, Ji-an…”
Hearing my Stepfather’s voice filter through the receiver pressed to the teacher’s ear sent a sudden jolt of terror through me.
I was terrified he would lose his temper after being summoned to the school and beat me.
Yet soon, a part of me thought that might actually be better.
Since I was beaten every day anyway, deep down I secretly hoped my Stepfather would come and hit me right in front of everyone.
So that no one would ever dare say I was putting on a show again.
I hadn’t realized that even that was far too much to ask.
- That’s not my kid.
The indifferent voice coming from the receiver ruthlessly crushed my faint hope.
The teacher looked at me with a bewildered expression.
- Suspend her, expel her, do whatever the hell you want.
As my Stepfather moved to hang up, the teacher asked him to put my mother on the line, but he dismissed it with a single line.
- My wife isn’t going anywhere.
That was the end of the call.
As time passed, the bullies’ parents arrived one after another. Shielding their own children, they blamed and condemned me in unison.
The Teachers’ Room filled with adults glaring and pointing fingers at me.
One of them sneered with venomous eyes:
“It’s always the motherless, fatherless bastards who are the problem.”
Those words drove like a heavy iron spike into my heart.
True, I had no father. He had died long ago. I still had a mother, yes. But having her was worse than having none at all.
It felt as if I were entirely alone in the world. No—I was alone.
I was the only one alone.
The sorrow and loneliness I had shoved down, crushed, and crumpled deep into my chest surged like a tidal wave and poured from my eyes.
It felt so unjust, my pride was shattered, and I hated crying, but the sobs bursting forth were so loud and violent that I couldn’t hold them back.
“Sob…”
I heard a woman sobbing.
When I opened my eyes, it was me. I felt the tears that had slipped from the corners of my eyes sliding across my temples and soaking my ears.
I rubbed my wet ears dry and sat up in bed.
When luck isn’t on your side, you dream the strangest things. Something from twelve years ago, of all things…
Was it because of the ominous dream? An uncanny premonition weighed on me.
Please be wrong. Please.
Harboring the squirming anxiety, I went to work at school.
Though I had wished so desperately for it to be wrong, my bad feeling, unfortunately, hit right on the mark.
