1st in Class Hides Regression - Chapter 18

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Top Student Hides Her Regression
Episode 18
My locker, which I’d been using without a lock ever since I broke it open on the first day of my regression, hung wide open.
All the notebooks and textbooks inside were torn to shreds, and a carton of Strawberry Milk from the school store lay burst open among the wreckage.
The door was dented, as if kicked, and a sour stench radiated from the locker.
Sticky pink milk was dripping down, seeping into the locker below mine as well.
My backpack.
The same bag I’d carried faithfully all through high school was lying abandoned in front of the locker, gaping open. A burst Strawberry Milk carton lay inside it too.
My reaction to this sight was simple.
‘…What the hell.’
Did they actually buy that milk?
Spent two thousand won at the store just to mess with me?
Who has that kind of money?
“Oh no….”
“What do we do…….”
“Da-hye, are you okay?”
By now, the front of the classroom was crowded with students. Some looked genuinely concerned; others stared with undisguised fascination.
“Kang Da, you alright?!”
Ji-su must have spotted this disaster from somewhere—she came running from the bathroom with an armful of toilet paper, dropped to her knees, and started wiping down my locker.
“I’m fine.”
I took the tissue and started mopping up the milk pooling below. The notebook I pulled out was already soaked through, too waterlogged to even open.
This one’s a lost cause.
I swept my eyes across the classroom.
By the back door near the lockers, I spotted a familiar face—standing with arms crossed, grinning.
A girl in a school uniform skirt shortened to what seemed impossibly short, with eyeliner drawn in what looked like Computer Marker Pen.
In about 396 days, she’d become Song Yeo-reum’s handmaid on a show called “High Teen Parents.”
I caught sight of the nameplate pinned to her chest—she was wearing a school uniform today instead of her usual casual hoodie.
Bang Eun-ji.
…I didn’t need to ask who’d done this.
I spoke quietly.
“Bang Eun-ji. Did you do this?”
“Do what.”
“My locker. Did you trash it?”
“Look me in the eye.”
Bang Eun-ji glared straight at me, then suddenly spewed out curses.
The area around us fell silent. Aware of the stares pressing in, Bang Eun-ji spat on the classroom floor.
Her dark-lensed eyes widened as she spoke.
“Da-hye, why are you being such a little brat?”
Her street hooligan phrasing was more laughable than intimidating.
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
“What, are you a teacher? If you ask me something, I have to answer?”
“That’s rich coming from you. You don’t answer the teachers either. Because you don’t know anything.”
“Tch.”
Bang Eun-ji’s hand shot up, and unable to contain herself, she kicked the door. The Mobile Phone in her grip looked freshly repaired.
After thrashing around alone for a while, Bang Eun-ji ran out of steam when she saw I wasn’t backing down. She ran her fingers through her bangs a few times, then curled her lips into a smile.
“So basically, you’re saying I did it.”
At my words, Bang Eun-ji asked back.
“Got proof?”
“Huh.”
So that’s how she wanted to play it.
Bang Eun-ji snickered.
“There a security camera in here or something? Or what, you got a witness? Even police need evidence to move. Try reporting it, go ahead.”
“…….”
“Ha, you’re pathetic.”
Bang Eun-ji, thinking my silence meant I’d been at a loss for words, let loose with another string of curses.
Song Yeo-reum wasn’t quite at this level, but Bang Eun-ji definitely lacked vocabulary—she seemed unable to speak without profanity.
Though she certainly had plenty to say.
Since my ears were about to rot off, I decided to apply my own filter from here on out.
“My dear friend Da-hye, do you remember how in middle school, you came to school wearing two-star knockoff shoes? When I publicly exposed them as fakes in front of everyone, you never wore them again, didn’t you?
(Profanity omitted)
Looking at how you carry yourself these days, I’d say you’ve come a long way from the girl in those knockoff shoes. But why is your backpack still the same? Why don’t you buy a new one from the Market, where your mother sells tteokbokki to make ends meet? Your mother works all day reeking of sundae, and you can’t scrape together a hundred thousand won for a bag? How pitiful.
……
Isn’t it hilarious? Your shoes actually had “Twostar” written on them? Like something out of a slaughterhouse textbook. Your mom……
I shrugged, watching Bang Eun-ji keep needling me about my mother.
‘Maybe constantly bringing up people’s parents is a kind of complex.’
The truth is, I know exactly what to say that would shut Bang Eun-ji’s mouth.
‘Yeah. My mom sells tteokbokki at the Market. But your mom sells something else across the street at the Noraebang.’
That’s why you’d rather die than walk down that road. Afraid you’ll run into her.
But the reason I don’t say it in the end is simple.
I don’t want to become like her.
Instead.
“Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t even know what they were when I put them on. I don’t know much about brands.”
I admitted it coolly.
“It’s true I didn’t bother buying brand-name shoes because I don’t have the money. But so what?”
I haven’t done anything wrong. I just didn’t know.
“I’m glad you’ve got money and know about shoes. But even if I don’t have shoes, I’ve got more up here than you do.”
“What?”
“You don’t get it? Your head’s empty. It’s not that you’re bad at studying—it’s that you don’t understand that tormenting people and humiliating them crosses a line. That’s the real problem with your intelligence.”
Other people aren’t unable to say hurtful things.
They just hold back because they know they shouldn’t.
“Everyone else respects boundaries naturally. You never have, so one day you’ll cross them hard, and when you do, society won’t be kind to you. Best case scenario, you end up on a teen-parent reality show. Worst case? Cheongju Women’s Prison.”
Get your gossip ready for prison—how you went to school with Jung Eun-sung, the one on TV, except nobody’s going to believe it.
Thinking about it that way, I actually felt sorry for Bang Eun-ji.
She wasn’t worth getting angry over. I just looked at her with pity.
“What does it matter now whether you know a brand name or not? What matters is what you’ll be doing ten years from now. I’ll be working toward my dreams, and I’ll have made them happen by then. What about you? Will you still be judging people’s shoes as they walk by?”
“Heh……”
“I’m giving you honest advice—instead of wasting time on this crap, go home and study geography. You thought Gyeongsang Province was north of Seoul.”
I shook my head, remembering how I’d graded her geography quiz and couldn’t hide my shock.
“You thought it was Gyeongsang because ‘Seoul’ has the character for ‘top’ in it? Go live there for a while. It’s North Korea.”
Spend ten years there and come back and write a memoir. I’ll buy you a copy.
What do you think—Twostar’s Emergency Landing?
Nice. Very Chun Doo-hwan.
Of course Bang Eun-ji didn’t understand what I was saying.
From everything I said, she’d barely grasped ‘I’m going to be successful,’ and she laughed at me.
“How’s someone like you—a Dirt Spoon—going to succeed? What, win the lottery?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Crazy mental victory……”
“Yeah. At least my mind’s winning. What about yours?”
I looked her up and down.
“You spend all day staring at what some stranger is carrying and wearing, ranking people in hierarchies, so your mind must be hell—no question there.”
……
“Your mind lost. Your argument lost. You haven’t won anything.”
Bang Eun-ji’s face flushed crimson and she had nothing left to say.
‘You don’t read a single page. How are you going to beat me in an argument? Read a book for once.’
Then it happened.
“Hey! What are you all doing!”
Teachers who’d come up for closing remarks saw students gathered in front of our Classroom and shouted.
The next-door homeroom teacher’s wooden striker went tap-tap-tap against the wall, and the startled students scattered like water.
“What’s this? Is something—oh my.”
Our homeroom teacher, who’d come up with Do-yeon, opened her eyes wide when she saw my trashed Locker and Backpack.
“…Who did this?”
The homeroom teacher’s angry voice dropped to a lower register.
Everyone’s eyes naturally turned to Bang Eun-ji.
‘But there’s no evidence.’
There’s no CCTV like Bang Eun-ji said.
It was my mistake leaving my Locker open because I thought there was nothing worth stealing.
I frowned, irritated.
Then it came.
“Bang Eun-ji did it.”
A clear voice cut through the students who hadn’t yet dispersed.
Someone pushed past the students who were turning to look and stepped forward.
It was Kyung Se-in. The girl who sat in front of me.
“Bang Eun-ji opened Kang Da-hye’s locker and took out her books and stepped on them and threw the milk. I saw it.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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