1st in Class Hides Regression - Chapter 6

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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 6
My second year of high school.
In my class, there was a girl named Woo Do-yeon.
Woo Do-yeon was beautiful.
She’d gone to a different middle school than I had, yet even at my middle school, there were kids who knew who she was.
Boys would actually enroll at the academy she attended just to see her.
‘I ended up in the same class as Woo Do-yeon.’
‘Pretty?’
‘Yeah. Insanely pretty.’
Woo Do-yeon also came from money.
Her father, who kept his hair neat and drove a nice car, would often drop her off in front of the school in that same vehicle.
Her uniform and shoes were always impeccable, and everything she owned was brand new.
She was a decent student too, which earned her the special affection of the teachers.
‘Why don’t we have Do-yeon read the next passage? My, what a lovely accent she has. Didn’t you live in New Zealand when you were young?’
‘Yes, Do-yeon. Make sure you collect the handouts for the class.’
An older male geography teacher openly favored Woo Do-yeon, bypassing the class president and assigning errands only to her.
The boys looked for any excuse to strike up a conversation with her, while some of the girls resented it.
That resentment reached its peak when the boys ranked the girls in their year by appearance and Woo Do-yeon came in first.
‘Do-yeon’s number one and Han Ji-su’s number two? That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Is Do-yeon even that pretty? I don’t think she’s anything special.’
We should’ve been angry at those boys for daring to rank people by looks, so why was our anger directed elsewhere instead?
If I had to make excuses, it’s because this was the past.
The kids’ worldviews hadn’t evolved yet.
‘I think Ji-su’s prettier.’
‘Me too. Ji-su’s genuinely elegant and refined-pretty, and Do-yeon is… honestly kind of.’
‘I know exactly what we’re thinking but I can’t quite say it~’
‘Do-yeon’s family has money, what if we get sued.’
That was definitely jealousy.
Because Woo Do-yeon was pretty, good at studying, came from a wealthy family, and was popular.
Han Ji-su had all that too, but to tear down the Woo Do-yeon we hated so much, we needed Ji-su to play the role of ‘she’s better than her’—and she obliged.
Even then, it could have ended there.
Not all the girls had lost their minds to jealousy.
She could have just been talked about behind her back by a few of them and that would’ve been it.
The problem was that Woo Do-yeon had a very cold personality.
‘Do-yeon, are these Sunglasses? They’re so pretty. Can I try them on just once?’
‘No.’
‘Huh?’
‘No, you can’t. If you want to try them, go buy your own.’
‘…How rude! Like I’m some kind of beggar.’
‘Heh… that’s what you get for wanting to try on someone else’s shoes in the first place.’
‘I was just curious, I was just asking!’
When Woo Do-yeon had conflicts with some of the girls and the boys had taken her side, they turned on her the moment they realized she treated them just as coldly.
‘Ungrateful.’
‘She’ll learn her lesson once she gets hurt.’
It was during this time when so many kids had it out for Woo Do-yeon.
Then the rumor started.
‘Hey, you know that thing about Do-yeon? She didn’t have friends in middle school because she got caught going to Neverland alone with her friend’s boyfriend, and that’s why.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Wow. I always knew she’d be boy-crazy.’
‘Honestly, isn’t she still like that? She acts all innocent but to the boys…’
The rumor began as a story about her seducing a friend’s boyfriend, but it grew with each retelling.
Supposedly, when a boy from her first-year class went to her house for a practical evaluation, she was lying on her bed and tapped the space next to her.
They said she was dating a history teacher in his early thirties who’d gotten married last year.
On crowded Yungjung-ro in Yeouido, she’d supposedly cried and screamed at the teacher, ‘When are you getting divorced?!’
I know.
It was ridiculous.
But when you’re young, you believe all of it.
‘By this point, didn’t the geography teacher seduce Do-yeon first?’
‘Then are the geography teacher and history teacher going to fight over Do-yeon?’
‘Ugh, disgusting.’
From that moment on, Woo Do-yeon became the public enemy of our school.
Whether she heard it or not—and they made sure she’d hear it—they cursed and sneered at her openly, mocked her relentlessly.
Every time the geography teacher showed favoritism toward Woo Do-yeon during class, every time the history teacher who knew nothing about any of this spoke to her, a certain look would pass between the other students. Silence.
So how did it end?
Woo Do-yeon, who had endured all manner of ridicule and insult with apparent calm, opened a classroom window one day and jumped.
Only then did the children who’d cursed her write letters saying they missed their pretty Do-yeon, stacking them high on her desk—but….
Woo Do-yeon never came back alive.
And now.
“Hey, Woo Do-yeon. You’re not answering? What’s your secret? How to seduce old men. Maybe I’ll seduce the geography teacher too, get him to tell me some test questions.”
“Look at her pretending not to hear.”
“Wasn’t she in the infirmary all morning? She’s sick but still came for lunch?”
“What if she was faking being sick just to date the geography teacher? That’s why she’s hungry now.”
“Gross!”
“What kind of thoughts are you having? You’re a pervert.”
“Hehe!”
“Hey, Woo Do-yeon! Can’t you hear? Are you deaf?”
“Hey, hey!”
In the past, I pretended not to know Woo Do-yeon.
My family was poor, struggling even to buy study materials; surrounded by kids armed with private tutors and cram schools, my grades could slip any moment; I had an unrequited crush on Seo Jae-gyeom—my own problems were enough to make my head spin,
and honestly, I was afraid.
I didn’t want to stand up for Woo Do-yeon, who wasn’t even close to me, only to become a target myself.
When I watched what she was suffering, my heart would ache, but the moment I turned away, I forgot about it.
When people around me joked about her, I probably laughed along with the crowd more than once.
But.
‘Now that I’ve lived to twenty-nine, I understand.’
All those things that seemed like the whole world back then?
Looking back, they mean nothing.
Just two years later, once you’re in university, you’ll never contact most of your high school friends and live just fine anyway.
What kind of person I was in high school? If I don’t say anything, nobody will ever know.
This is really nothing at all.
And yet someone died because of that nothing.
“Hey, Woo Do-yeon, can’t you hear? Hey!”
“Wow, getting hit with a Walnut Pastry and still pretending not to notice.”
“Hey, throw some kimchi at her, kimchi.”
“Ah, then I’d have to pick it up with my bare hands.”
“Just use chopsticks to grab it and throw it!”
“That’s genius.”
I’m happier than I could possibly be now that I’ve returned to the past.
But this isn’t something I earned through my own merit.
The Regressor could have been Woo Do-yeon. It could have been Jung Eun-seong. That it was me was pure chance.
I was simply luckier than Woo Do-yeon.
If I’m enjoying a second chance because of my good fortune, but Woo Do-yeon isn’t, then the world is just too rotten.
So I do what I would have certainly done for myself if I weren’t the Regressor but Woo Do-yeon was.
Q. Didn’t you say you were only going to study?
A. That’s what I was trying to do…. I really was trying to.
I’m still an adult, but how could I sleep well at night if I just stood by watching that? My conscience wouldn’t let me.
Can’t study without proper sleep.
Besides, if you’re going to study, you need a proper study environment in the first place.
When one person is being singled out and bullied, how can anyone study in such an atmosphere?
‘Fine, might as well share this luck I stumbled into. It’s not like it wears out.’
“Ji-su.”
I turned to look at Ji-su, who was standing beside me holding her lunch tray with an anxious expression.
“Sorry, but I can’t eat with you today. There’s an empty seat next to Seo Jae-gyeom over there—just for today, eat with him.”
Better not to sit with me and draw any crossfire.
“I’m really sorry. After math, I’ll buy you a chocolate milk?”
Without waiting for an answer, I headed toward Woo Do-yeon’s table.
Clink.
The sound of my lunch tray hitting the table rang out loud in the quiet cafeteria.
The pack at the nearby table, who’d just been giggling while picking up kimchi with their chopsticks, snapped their mouths shut and stared at me.
I pulled out a chair as if nothing was amiss and sat across from Woo Do-yeon.
Woo Do-yeon, who had been eating steadily, looked up at me.
“Kang Da-hye, what are you doing?”
Song Yeo-reum, sitting at the next table with a Walnut Pastry in her hand that she was about to toss to Woo Do-yeon, called out to me.
For the record, Song Yeo-reum was one of the few people from high school that I actually remembered, having forgotten almost everyone else from those days.
We’d been in the same middle school, and she was already notorious then as a troublemaker.
She used to go around taking money from kids with lines like “Just a thousand won,” “Just ten thousand,” “You have any cash on you? No? Can’t you just go withdraw it from the ATM?” — altogether she must’ve stolen over a million won.
We were in the same class in eighth grade, and when I told her I didn’t have any money, she said “Really?” and flicked my school uniform skirt pocket.
To see if there were any bills in it.
She once shoved my friend who’d gotten into a foreign language high school into the supply closet and beat her, and she also asked me to help her cheat on an English test.
‘I was really afraid of you back then.’
In the school bathroom, she’d unplugged the hand dryer and plugged in a hair straightener in its place — I saw her hair badly singed and her uniform skirt hitched up wrong, nothing else fitting properly.
“Hey, Kang Da-hye. What are you doing right now?”
“…Spreading good luck around.”
“What?”
“Well, it might be bad luck for you.”
“What kind of nonsense— Ahhh!”
The Red Bean Butter Walnut Pastry I’d thrown flew straight into Song Yeo-reum’s soup bowl. She shrieked as the broth splattered all over the hoodie she was wearing.
I grinned at Do-yeon, whose eyes had gone wide.
I’m overflowing with happiness from this fortune, so I wish everyone else could be just as happy as I am.

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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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