CH 379

“Someone hit Jong-Su?” Kang Jin-Ho's brows shot up.

“Yeah…” Park Yu-Min slowly nodded.

Kang Jin-Ho's glare grew cold as his eyes became withdrawn. He simply could not accept this!

Someone hit that boy?! Who dares!

“Who was it?! Who dared to hurt Jong-Su!” Kang Jin-Ho growled quietly.

“Uh... well.” Park Yu-Min grimaced a little.

Kang Jin-Ho got up. “Let's go!”

“Go where?”

Kang Jin-Ho glanced at his friend, his expression now cold and unmoving. “To wreck the bastard who dared to hurt Jong-Su!”

“J-Jin-Ho! Hang on a sec! Calm down first!”

“Calm down?! Did you ask me to calm down?!”

Park Yu-Min freaked out when killing intent gushed out of Kang Jin-Ho. He remembered that his friend had this strange tendency of focusing his entire being on weird things!

Kang Jin-Ho narrowed his eyes. “Didn't you say someone hit Jong-Su?”

“Yeah, that did happen. And that's why I'm telling you about it. But, Jin-Ho, you gotta listen to me, okay? Getting angry after some elementary school kids got into a scuffle is problematic as an adult, don't you think?”

“...If an adult needs to be calm in a situation like this, I'd rather stop being an adult!”

“Even then! Going after the other kid is not right, Jin-Ho! First of all, you gotta calm down first. It's already past ten o'clock in the night, you know!”

“Mm...!” Kang Jin-Ho shot a sharp glare at the clock before sitting down while frowning unhappily.

Park Yu-Min confirmed Kang Jin-Ho's attitude and could only groan nonstop. How could he not, when Kang Jin-Ho's expression was clearly screaming, 'I have not given up on punishing that little punk, but it's already late, so the punishment will be postponed till later. However, if you fail to convince me, I shall charge straight into Jong-Su's elementary school tomorrow. Don't you dare stop me!'

'I shouldn't have said anything...'

Park Yu-Min scratched the back of his head. He only brought up the matter about Jong-Su since he believed Kang Jin-Ho had the right to know about the matters involving the orphanage. If Kang Jin-Ho heard the news from a different source later, he'd definitely get angry at Park Yu-Min for hiding something so important from him!

Still, Park Yu-Min hoped Kang Jin-Ho would at least try to respond like an adult, but this... Wasn't this worse than Park Yu-Min's initial reaction?

Kang Jin-Ho growled menacingly. “Tell me what happened. Don't leave out any details!”

Even Ju Yeong-Gi joined the duo by bringing an extra chair and settling down on it. Park Yu-Min sighed at the intense expressions on the two men, then began explaining the situation.

“Okay, so... What happened was…”

***

“What you're saying is…”

“Kids at school ganged up on Jong-Su?”

“And many of them, to boot?”

“Mm...!”

Kang Jin-Ho grimly nodded as if he saw no point in listening any further, while Ju Yeong-Gi was loudly tutting away, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

Their responses freshly reminded Park Yu-Min that he didn't have any... 'normal' people around him to get advice from.

'These idiots are just no help whatsoever...!'

Was Park Yu-Min the only one here with some semblance of common sense? If he didn't keep his wits about him, even Park Yu-Min might lose the position of 'the only voice of reason' in this trio, something he had been working so hard to hold onto all this time!

“So? What are you gonna do about it?” Ju Yeong-Gi asked while leaning back against his chair.

“For now... I was thinking of speaking to the school's faculty,” said Park Yu-Min.

“And what will you say after going there?”

“Well, a child was ganged up on by bullies, so I gotta tell them to do something about it.”

Ju Yeong-Gi snorted derisively. “You dumbass! You think that's gonna do anything?! Let's say the teacher will summon all the bullies and tell them to never do it again. Do you honestly think they will stop?”

“...But that's the only method available, right?”

“Listen here, you dummy! You're only gonna worsen the situation that way! I've also bullied a few kids in my schoolboy days, so I know what I'm talking about. One of the little twerps blabbed his mouth to his mommy, and that hag showed up at our school the following morning. And let me tell ya something, okay? She was one crazy Karen, alright! The whole faculty was flipped on its head that day. Teachers summoned me and grilled me dry until nothing was left! Holy cow, they sure hit me real good back then!”

“...Okay. What happened afterward?”

“When the teachers were gone, I dragged the loose-mouthed twerp away and showed him what the gates to heaven looked like. You understand now?”

“...Huh. Thank you for the vivid account of your life story, Mister Ju Yeong-Gi,” Park Yu-Min groaned loudly.

Obviously, he knew all this already. Hadn't he experienced something similar before? If it hadn't been for Kang Jin-Ho, Park Yu-Min would've been subjected to worse bullying than what Jong-Su was going through.

There were no dependable adults around Jong-Su to offer a helping hand in this despairing situation, and that made Park Yu-Min's heart ache even more.

Ju Yeong-Gi continued to explain. “Don't underestimate them just because they are a bunch of little twerps. No, wait. Because they are kids, you should be especially awake around them. Adults are cowards, but not kids. Kids are fearless. Adults know their lives will be screwed if they get caught doing something stupid, so they will try to stop themselves. But kids don't think that way. Let's get real here, fellas. These days, even murder isn't a serious-enough crime to get underaged kids punished. In that case, why would they be scared of anything?”

“You... have a point there.”

“Besides, kids aren't as pure as you think. We're older now, and that's the only reason why the kids' antics look cute to us. However, these elementary school kids have already established a pecking order. They even know how to separate the off-limits from the easy targets. If you force yourself into this situation and try to change it, Jong-Su will get isolated even more.”

“I know that. I know, but...!” Park Yu-Min held his head. “That doesn't mean I shouldn't do anything, right? But I can't go to that school and beat up a group of little kids, like what Jin-Ho's been proposing!”

“...That's true.” Ju Yeong-Gi groaned.

'Damn it. What a f*cked-up problem this is...'

Bullying in schools was already accepted as a serious societal problem in Korea for a long time now. Despite many people working their butts off to resolve this issue, though, no one had managed to find the silver bullet just yet.

Park Yu-Min massaged his forehead. “Can't I just talk to these kids and make them understand? I mean... If I make them see how bad it is to bully other kids…”

“You dummy. If they knew something like that already, those kids wouldn't have bullied anyone in the first place.”

“...I guess so.”

“Yu-Min, you have this weird tendency of judging people too nicely. Listen here, man. Every citizen in this country spends at least one hour a day during school learning about morals and stuff. But that didn't eliminate crime, now did it? Education doesn't reform people. Nope. Education simply teaches people that crime will lead to severe punishment, that's all! If education worked, we'd all be living in paradise, not this rubbish Hell Joseon.”

“I get it, okay? I do. But...!” Park Yu-Min stared at Ju Yeong-Gi while making a helpless face.

“Finally... Listen, man. Adults butting in is not a good idea. Make that a stupidly terrible idea. Those bullies see Jong-Su as an easy target. If adults butt in now, they will view Jong-Su as a coward and a rat who can't keep his mouth shut. It sounds like the leaders of the gang already control the classroom. In that case, do you think physical bullying is the only way to hurt Jong-Su?”

“No…”

“Kids these days are crafty, man. Back when we were still in school, we'd control ourselves since we didn't want the teachers to beat us up. But kids nowadays don't even think of their teachers as teachers, you know? Since no teacher will hit them, these kids aren't scared of anything. Getting told off? So what? They'll just look for a way to bully Jong-Su without teachers noticing it. I'm telling you, doing that will crush Jong-Su even more!”

Park Yu-Min helplessly looked at Kang Jin-Ho next.

Kang Jin-Ho unhappily rubbed his chin before glancing at Park Yu-Min. “Let's figure out the core of the problem first. Why was Jong-Su being bullied in the first place?”

“You wanna know the reason?”

“Yeah. People don't hit each other without a good reason, now do they?”

“Well, uh…” Park Yu-Min hesitated, not knowing what to say.

But then, Ju Yeong-Gi erupted in anger. “Hey, you moron! Were you even listening to what I said?! There can only be one reason bullies go around picking on someone!”

When Ju Yeong-Gi shouted while pointing at him, Kang Jin-Ho frowned deeply. “And I want to know what that reason is.”

“Because, Jong-Su is an easy target!” Ju Yeong-Gi yelled, still sounding irritated. “Other reasons are just stupid excuses, okay! Let's say some punk threw a bucket of dirty water used to wash a mop on you.”

“Mm...?”

“When that punk thinks you shouldn't be messed around with, he's gonna rub his hands like a damn weasel and try to apologize like the little punk that he is. However, if he thinks you're an easy target, his fists are gonna be flying right away. I guarantee it.”

“Mm…” Kang Jin-Ho slowly nodded.

'Sounds familiar.'

Kang Jin-Ho agreed wholeheartedly with that notion as a survivor of Zhongyuan. That place was like a jungle where the strong always preyed on the weak, after all. Humans might be equal under the heavens, but people still responded differently depending on who they were dealing with.

Countless reasons could be invented, but everything would always lead back to being an 'easy target'. Kang Jin-Ho couldn't deny that fact.

“Jong-Su is a small and scrawny kid. He's also an orphan, and his clothes are all hand-me-downs, plus he's a scaredy cat, too. But do you know what the real meaning behind those evaluations is? Jong-Su is nothing more than an easy target for those bullies. He looks weak, so he won't hit back even if bullies gang up on him. He doesn't have parents, so there won't be any blowbacks afterward, too. That's the simple truth.” Ju Yeong-Gi crossed his arms again and leaned against the chair. “In that case, what other excuses do you need? Those punks think Jong-Su is an easy prey. And here's the thing!”

Ju Yeong-Gi's voice grew more heated.

“I'm guessing it can't only be Jong-Su. That kid is still young and naive, and that's why he told you about the bullying at school. I will bet the socks I'm wearing right now that other kids in the orphanage must be going through something similar, too! Min-Gi, my little bro, should be fine, though, since I beat the living crap out of him to instill all the necessary street smarts in him!”

Park Yu-Min's complexion grew gloomy.

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In the past, kids from orphanages often fell in with the wrong crowd. Either they became bullies and gangsters or went around causing serious incidents. Many would end up straying down the wrong path, but the situation in recent times had changed somewhat.

One could no longer become the top dog just because they were a bit more vicious and violent than others around them. Not having parents was seen as a weakness these days, and people would use that as an excuse to shun the orphans openly or covertly.

“And for some unfathomable reason, the kids at the orphanage all take after our idiot over here and act wishy-washy and stuff! Can't you tell that orphans with weak personalities are practically sitting ducks for bullies?”

Kang Jin-Ho's expression hardened the more he listened.

“You think being patient and holding yourself back will solve your problems? Nope. Doing that will only make you a dumbass. The best way to handle every crap coming your way isn't holding back but making the others understand you ain't gonna take any bullsh*t lying down. That's it. If you fail to do that and keep enduring, then well…” Ju Yeong-Gi's complexion darkened after recalling some unpleasant memories. “In any case... There is no other reason. Seongsim's kids are easy targets, that's all. So, the best solution is to make our kids no longer easy targets. However, if we go with your idea of getting teachers involved to bite the bullies' heads off, that will only force the bullies to drag our kids somewhere out of the way.”

“I, I know that. But... still...!” Park Yu-Min rubbed his temples. That was when Kang Jin-Ho suddenly got up. Park Yu-Min blinked his eyes in surprise. “J-Jin-Ho?”

“Nothing can be done by us running our mouths here,” said Kang Jin-Ho with a powerful shake of his head. “Yeong-Gi is right. If it's only Jong-Su getting bullied, we should consider ourselves lucky. However, even I think Jong-Su won't be the only victim. Let's go to the orphanage and find out. Our priority is figuring out if other kids are being bullied, and if they are, to what extent.”

“Okay.” Park Yu-Min nodded, agreeing with Kang Jin-Ho's opinion.

“Let's close the store,” said Kang Jin-Ho.

“Got it!”

Ju Yeong-Gi and Park Yu-Min hurriedly tidied up the pizzeria. They had to get to the orphanage before the kids went to bed.

“...Bloody hell. Those damn kids!” Ju Yeong-Gi suddenly spat out angry-sounding curses while turning the lights off. He had grown close to those kids, so the news of them getting bullied was seriously pissing him off. “When I get my hands on those little sh*ts...!”

Rounding up all the stinking bullies and showing them hell wasn't all that hard. However, Ju Yeong-Gi knew that that wouldn't fix the fundamental problem.

“Being emotional won't help anyone, Yeong-Gi,” said Park Yu-Min.

“I know. I know, okay?” Ju Yeong-Gi grumbled in irritation while heading toward the car. Kang Jin-Ho sighed and followed his friends.

'I shouldn't think lightly about this.'

Pretty much all major problems impacting Kang Jin-Ho's life so far could've been dealt with through martial arts. Well, nothing was off-limits with power, after all. However, this particular problem couldn't be resolved by beating up the instigators.

While sensing the increasing weight of his heart, Kang Jin-Ho climbed into Ju Yeong-Gi's car, then looked out the window.

For some reason, the usually-comforting darkness seemed rather melancholic and confining tonight.