There Are Four Top Idol Uncles - Chapter 184

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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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Part 2, Episode 10
* * *
Throughout the time Siw received his lunch in the cafeteria, he felt an enormous weight of attention bearing down on Yewon.
Yet Yewon seemed entirely unaffected by those stares, her expression bright and utterly at ease.
All the classmates around her looked as though they wanted nothing more than to ask her to eat together.
Whether she simply didn’t notice their gazes or chose not to care, Yewon slipped away from their sight and drifted toward somewhere else entirely.
Where was she headed?
Siw’s eyes followed the back of her figure.
He’d noticed earlier that she already had close friends in other classes.
Was she going to them?
Siw felt a small prick of unease as he trailed after her.
Even if eating together was out of reach, he could at least sit nearby and listen in on the conversation.
She’d told him offhandedly that he could keep Haion for all she cared.
But Siw found it impossible to believe her words.
This wasn’t just any major corporation—it was Haion.
For someone to refuse when offered control of Haion itself was, by any rational measure, incomprehensible to him.
There had to be another reason.
To discover what it was, he needed to gather whatever information he could about her.
But then—
“…!”
Yewon walked straight past the cluster of first-year students already seated—
“Hey there. Or should I say… senior, now?”
—and stepped into the area where the third-year students had gathered.
Why on earth was she going there?
Siw froze in place.
The moment a first-year breached the third-year section, that girl would be marked by the upperclassmen—that much was certain.
The hierarchical culture peculiar to this middle school was something even Siw, who paid no mind to ordinary school life, understood as a given.
“…Yewon.”
“Is the food here any good? I hope it is.”
“You can’t come here—”
“Do you guys get something good on Wednesdays too? Do you seniors memorize the lunch schedule?”
“….”
But Yewon showed not the slightest concern for such rules, or for the sharp, hostile glares directed at her.
As always, she remained remarkably fresh and kind, and also—
Siw deliberately shook his head.
No. He couldn’t.
He couldn’t let himself sink into these idle thoughts again.
After a moment’s hesitation, Siw took a seat in an empty part of the third-year section—not far from where Yewon was.
A third-year beside him muttered something about how the first-years must have gone crazy, but Siw paid it no mind.
Frankly, his sixteen-year-old seniors frightened him far less than his aunt, and his aunt frightened him far less than Yewon.
“Back in elementary school, they had mapo tofu sometimes. Do you get that here too?”
“…elementary….”
“Come on, don’t tease fellow elementary alumni like that.”
The third-year who had initially tried to drive Yewon away
found himself entirely outmatched by her relentless onslaught; he laughed despite himself and surrendered to her charm.
Siw watched the back of Yewon’s figure and mused.
How could anyone not fear her?
She was that formidable.
* * *
There was one other person watching Yewon and Hyuk intently.
“Wow. They’re really in their own world.”
“From day one? These people are insane.”
“What is this? Are we supposed to just ignore the seniors’ authority from the start?”
“Back in my day, we couldn’t even look seniors in the eye.”
“We couldn’t even sit at the same table. Not a chance. If you wanted even a bit part in the school festival, you had to grovel.”
“Seriously.”
“This girl’s got connections, clearly.”
“How are people without backing supposed to survive here, seriously….”
The third-years began murmuring among themselves in voices thick with resentment at Yewon’s arrival.
There was no chance such complaints would escape Eunoh’s ears.
At that moment.
“Eunoh. Don’t you think you should say something? You’re the Student Council president.”
A girl from his class asked him in a sharp tone.
He knew she was in the same class, though her name escaped him—the kind of relationship where he barely registered her existence. Of course, she probably thought they were close.
…
Eunoh didn’t see any reason to respond. He simply pushed the rest of his food into his mouth in silence.
Perhaps it was because he ate among relationships as fragile as sandcastles, crumbling at the slightest wave.
Like always, it tasted no different from chewing sand.
“What, you sulking?”
Eunoh finally set down his spoon.
His appetite, already meager, felt buried in mud.
“If you want to deal with first-years, do it yourself.”
!
“I don’t see any reason to stop third-years who want to hang out with first-years.”
The girl who’d picked the fight flushed crimson at his words.
“Damn, that’s true.”
“Right. Why would we stop her if she wants to hang out with first-years?”
“She downgraded to her own level. That proves her mental age is exactly that. Why stop her? Kim Chaeyeon, are you as bright as Mun Hyeok?”
The rest of the students burst into laughter.
They all agreed with Eunoh, chuckling and nodding along.
“Ugh, you want to die? You’re not even Eunoh’s followers or anything. You always take his side.”
“Because Eunoh said something right, so we take his side. Should we take your side instead?”
“What are you talking about. That would be stupid.”
The girl called Kim Chaeyeon retaliated sharply, as if embarrassed, but kept sneaking glances at Eunoh.
She’d started the hostility herself, yet she still seemed to care about his reaction.
Eunoh, for his part, felt nothing but disgust at the other students’ responses and rose quietly to his feet.
“What? You done eating already?”
“Come on, follow me. Ah, looks like you’re on a diet.”
The kids around him scrambled to stand and follow, but he shook his head briefly.
“The teacher gave me an errand. If you follow me now, you’ll just end up doing the errand with me.”
…
At his words, the students hesitated for a moment, then sat back down.
“No point in us chasing after you. One good student is enough.”
“Our homeroom teacher can’t stand us anyway. Likes only you. You going alone is better, right? Hey, I’m doing you a favor here.”
Faced with their immediate excuses, Eunoh simply turned around without responding further.
There had never been any errand to begin with.
The moment he finished clearing his tray and stepped outside alone.
!
Eunoh encountered someone he hadn’t expected.
“Oh, hello.”
Yewon.
“You’re the Student Council president, right?”
Since the first day—that girl who kept making him frown, like sunlight hidden behind clouds on an overcast day.
She was speaking to him now.
“Yewon, this person is—”
With the dense Mun Hyeok trailing behind her.
“That’s right.”
Eunoh answered quickly, before Mun Hyeok could say something even more foolish.
“Ah, yes. Hello! I’m Yewon, by the way. I’ve been really close to Hyuk since we were little.”
She chatted away without being asked.
Eunoh looked down at Yewon slowly.
Should he tell her that first-years were supposed to eat with first-years, that it was a school rule?
Should he warn her that if she kept drawing attention to herself like this, she’d end up having a hard time at school like Mun Hyeok?
Shouldn’t she already know, having worked in the entertainment industry, how easily people could fill their hearts with malice over the smallest things?
How many would slander her out of pure jealousy and spite?
Should he offer such meddling disguised as advice?
Eunoh calculated quietly by himself, then swallowed all those words.
“Your ribbon came undone.”
“Huh?”
He said only that, then turned and went his own way.
From behind, he heard chirping like a sparrow: “No, wait. Why didn’t you tell me this? Seriously. You’ve been eating with me all this time, and you don’t know? What am I supposed to do if you’re the one who understands the least?”
Ah.
He really wanted to stop.
Getting tangled up in someone else’s life, worn down by it.
Never again would he meddle, not this time.
He would never repeat the mistakes of before.
Even as Eunoh made this resolve, he found himself turning around without meaning to.
Because of that child, rising up on tiptoe above the clouds, coming into view.

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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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