Tsunami Advisory
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
Even though it took the form of an apology, the blatant sneer lingering on Suhyun’s lips and the snickers erupting from his crew proved it was anything but an accident. Hae-il’s mouth twisted into a smirk at the overt provocation.
“Ah, this is why home discipline is so important. Crossing the line after all, without even knowing your place.”
His low voice dripped with his signature arrogance and a contempt that seemed to crush the other boy’s very existence underfoot. He had let Suhyun’s first provocation slide, but it seemed he fully intended to answer the second.
“Home discipline? Looks like that precious breeding of yours taught the young master to talk shit about other people’s families.”
Suhyun snapped back sarcastically. With Hae-il refusing to back down, sparks flew between the two, ready to detonate at any second. It was an open secret that they had disliked each other from the start.
“Yeah, I learned to thoroughly stomp on anyone who forgets their place and tries to crawl over me. Do I need to teach you a lesson myself?”
“Fuck off with your lessons! Go ahead and try it. Acting all high and mighty just because of your dad’s name—I’m sick and tired of looking at your pathetic ass!”
The moment those words left his mouth, Suhyun threw a punch straight at Hae-il’s face. With a dull thud, Hae-il’s head snapped to the side. His lip split instantly, bright crimson blood seeping out, yet Hae-il didn’t care in the slightest—he actually grinned as if amused. That chilling smile was the starting flare that signaled the brawl.
“You started it, right?”
Hae-il retaliated without hesitation. His fists were far faster and carried vastly more weight than Suhyun’s. Taking a direct blow to the abdomen, Suhyun staggered backward with a choked groan, but Hae-il gave him not a shred of breathing room, raining down a barrage of strikes.
Tangled together and rolling across the gym floor, the two looked like utterly untamed beasts. The other kids either screamed in sheer terror or watched the spectacle with eyes gleaming in excitement.
As the fight escalated, their respective friends stepped in to pull them apart, but with tempers flaring, other kids got swept up in the chaos, and it threatened to turn into a full-blown gang fight in an instant. Right then, the gymnasium doors slammed open, and the teacher who had disappeared earlier came sprinting inside.
“What is going on here?!”
All eyes snapped to the teacher simultaneously. Of the two tangled on the floor, Hae-il pushed himself up first. By all accounts, it was his overwhelming victory. Just as everyone recognized the outcome and thought the whole ordeal was over—
Hae-il planted his foot on top of Suhyun’s hand where it lay sprawled on the floor. And just as Suhyun had done to his glasses moments ago, he pressed down slowly, shifting his entire weight onto it. The sickening sound of crushing bone cut through the silence.
“Aaaaaargh—!”
Suhyun screamed in agony. The murmurs that filled the gym froze solid at that raw, ragged shriek.
“Han Hae-il!”
The teacher rushed over in absolute horror. Only then did Hae-il take his foot off Suhyun’s hand. Clutched around his mangled hand, Suhyun writhed on the floor. His face was already horribly twisted in pain, several fingers visibly broken and bent at grotesque angles. Pale with shock at the horrific sight before him, the teacher frantically examined Suhyun’s hand.
Yet Hae-il merely looked down at the entire scene in silence. Not a flicker of agitation crossed his face; only a cold sense of satisfaction lingered there. Hae-il casually dusted off his fist—the one that had landed squarely on Suhyun’s face multiple times—as if brushing away specks of dirt. Then, as if flipping a switch, his expression instantly shifted to one of deep concern.
“Ah, my glasses broke, so I can’t see very well. Did I happen to step on Suhyun?”
Saying so, Hae-il crouched down and made a show of blindly patting around Suhyun’s body. It was an awkward, exaggerated gesture, just like someone who truly couldn’t see a thing.
“Suhyun-ah, are you okay? I’m so sorry. Your hand… it’s fine, right? Without my glasses, I really can’t see at all.”
His tone was endlessly gentle, but an unmistakable sneer curved the corners of his mouth.
Danbi couldn’t help but think that this was his true face: arrogance, ruthless contempt, and a merciless streak of violence binding it all together. The shield that had supposedly protected her from Suhyun was an even bigger psychopath.
She had suspected as much ever since he handed her five hundred thousand won just for finding his pencil case, but he seemed to be far crazier than she had imagined.
Didn’t he say he hated noise? I’d better not talk to him too much from now on. I need to stay quiet as a dead mouse. Not long after she made that vow, an ambulance arrived with a loud wail of sirens, and Suhyun was carried out of the school on a stretcher. With Suhyun gone, his friends, who had been swaggering with bravado just moments before, became as quiet as if nothing had ever happened.
Only after sending Suhyun off in the ambulance did the PE teacher turn his attention to Hae-il. Blood was trickling from Hae-il’s lip as well.
“Ugh, you boys, seriously… Hurry up and go to the nurse’s office.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hae-il answered nonchalantly. He took a few steps toward the gymnasium door, then paused with a faint sigh. He seemed a bit uneasy because he couldn’t see clearly ahead. Right at the moment Hae-il’s friends noticed and moved to approach him—
“Hey, Lee Danbi. Give me a hand.”
Danbi’s shoulders flinched at the unexpected summons. She had resolved to put up a wall starting today, but he had torn it down in an instant.
“…Me?”
“Yeah. What are you dawdling for? Get over here.”
At his irritable snap, his friends, who had been stepping forward to support him, backed away in unison as if on cue. Terrified she might end up like Suhyun, Danbi hurried over and took hold of his arm. Calling it support was generous; she was merely holding his arm and matching his stride. She could feel the eyes of her classmates boring into her back, but she didn’t dare look around.
“Ah, what are you doing? Can’t you hold on properly?”
Every tiny sway brought a burst of irritation from him. Instantly reduced to a maid serving a young master, Danbi had to stay razor-sharp and faithfully play the role of his human navigation system, terrified of getting on his nerves again.
“We’re here.”
Arriving in front of the nurse’s office door, Danbi let go of his arm. Instantly, Hae-il scowled.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming inside with me?”
“Me too?”
“Unbelievable. Then what about when I go back? You expect me to fumble around on my own?”
“Ah… Right.”
“You’re my glasses today. Do your job properly.”
“…Why does it have to be me? You have plenty of friends.”
Danbi grumbled reflexively, then clamped her mouth shut as the image of a beaten-to-a-pulp Suhyun flashed through her mind. She checked his expression to see if he was angry, but he merely replied in a flat, indifferent tone.
“You played a part in breaking my glasses.”
“Me? I was trying to pick them up for you.”
“Then you should have picked them up faster before Lee Suhyun stepped on them. With some agility.”
Unbelievable. Danbi let out a hollow laugh at his shameless logic. The more she got to know him, the more absurd he seemed, but since she owed him a favor, she decided to help him just this once. No, honestly, she was just too intimidated to find the courage to refuse.
Opening the door to the nurse’s office, Danbi saw the teacher’s empty desk and looked around.
“Excuse me, Teacher?” she called out a few times, but there was no response.
Did she get an upset stomach like the PE teacher? It felt awkward to keep standing by the door, so Danbi guided Hae-il to sit on the nearest bed for now.
“Let’s wait a bit. Ah, by the way, is your head okay?”
“Not my head, my face. Here. Is it swollen?”
He tilted his head slightly as if showing her where he’d been hit. Just as he said, one cheek was slightly reddened. It was the spot where Suhyun’s ball had struck him earlier.
“Yeah. It must hurt.”
“Ah. It’s so infuriating, seriously. I should have stomped on him more.”
You stomped on him plenty.
Danbi couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud and kept her mouth shut. But Hae-il, still clearly simmering with rage, kept talking.
“Isn’t it bizarre? That guys like that are someone’s precious kid. When he goes home, he probably hears stuff like ‘Our son is the best.’ The parents are the problem. That’s why he acts so full of himself without even knowing his place.”
Listening quietly to Hae-il’s words, Danbi saw the faces of her own parents flicker through her mind—parents who always told her she was the best. Even if a child wasn’t objectively the best, to a parent, their own child could only ever be the most special and precious thing in the world.
“But isn’t that… inevitable because they’re a precious child? Losing your objectivity and turning blind is part of what love is, too.”
Perhaps caught off guard by her counterargument, Hae-il let out a scoff.
“What? Are you taking his side right now?”
“Huh? I’m not taking his side…”
“Whatever, everything’s annoying. That bastard is annoying, you’re annoying, everything is!”
He tapped his feet in small, frustrated stomps, overcome with irritation. He was supposed to be one of the smartest kids in this school—no, maybe in the entire country. Yet watching him ruthlessly beat Suhyun out of pure emotion, or repeatedly whining about how everything was annoying like a little kid, made him seem rather immature.
Even if he’s the son of a big-shot CEO, is he really just an overgrown seventeen-year-old boy? Danbi set about soothing Hae-il as if he were a throwing a terrible-twos tantrum.
“Of course, both sides share some blame in a fight, but Suhyun was still in the wrong for hitting first…”
“Lee. Su. Hyun.”
He corrected her sharply. Taking the feedback, Danbi quickly amended her words.
“Right, Lee Suhyun was in the wrong. Plus, he threw a ball at your face. It must have hurt a lot.”
“Yeah, it hurts.”
His tone was still curt, but he answered obediently. Seeing his expression soften a fraction compared to before, it seemed his anger had dissipated just a little.
At that moment, Danbi suddenly realized that his gaze wasn’t focused squarely on her face, but wandering somewhere around her shoulders and chest. He was someone who always looked people straight in the eye. Could he not even focus properly without his glasses?
“Is your eyesight really that bad?”
“Yeah. From here, I can’t even see you properly. It’s blurry.”
“Then wouldn’t it be better to get eye surgery? Like LASIK or LASEK. Glasses get in the way when you exercise.”
“No way. I have to look at a monitor up close for the rest of my life, so even if I get surgery, it’ll just get bad again.”
“Why are you looking at a monitor for the rest of your life?”
“Because I’m going to be a developer.”
Like Han Moo-jae’s son, he seemed to have a deep interest in computers.
Out of pure curiosity, Danbi lowered her stance slightly, thrusting her face into his blurry field of vision.
“Just how bad is it? You can’t even see my face right now? You don’t even know where I am?”
“No. I can see your outline, but I can’t see your features.”
He narrowed his eyes as if trying to look at her more closely.
“Ah, this is driving me crazy, seriously.”
Muttering with irritation, he abruptly grabbed Danbi’s wrist. Because she was already leaning forward, Danbi let out a short shriek as her balance collapsed completely, pulling her right in front of Hae-il’s face.
A dizzying proximity—their noses nearly touching, his warm breath fanning across her cheek. Her entire vision was filled with nothing but his deep, dark eyes. While her startled heart leaped up to her throat, hammering and thrashing in a frantic spasm, he muttered nonchalantly.
“Yeah. Now I can finally see.”
