Summer season volume 1

1: Prologue

 

July was just around the corner, yet the school still hadn’t turned on the air conditioning. Thanks to that, the classroom was already hot and stuffy, even though it was still morning. Normally, in a classroom full of third-years preparing for the CSAT, this would have been the time when the only sounds were pencils scratching across paper and pages turning in workbooks. Today, however, there was a restless atmosphere. The television had been switched on, and after checking that the Monday morning school assembly was broadcasting properly, their homeroom teacher had quietly slipped out of the room.

 

“Fucking psycho. Seriously.”

 

Eunho muttered as he stared at the jet-black back of the boy’s head in the centre of the screen. His shoulders were broad enough to block a good portion of the picture, just as you’d expect from someone who’d been an athlete. They said cameras made people look bulkier, but apparently that wasn’t always true. If anything, the way the back of his school shirt stretched perfectly flat across him was particularly noticeable.

 

He stood about a head taller than the other students beside him, leaving the pale nape of his neck near the top of the screen. His hair had been neatly trimmed in a straight line above his shirt collar. There wasn’t a single thing out of place. He looked like the male lead straight out of some youth romance comic.

 

“Cha Dohyeon, that bastard, wasn’t he someone who never used to study?”

 

“Didn’t he compete in some city-level taekwondo tournament last year and come back with a medal? Fucking impressive, seriously.”

 

Eunho turned towards the sharp voices and was immediately greeted by the sight of several ugly piercings dangling from both ears. The boys sitting there, slouched crookedly in their chairs and sneering, looked like they had probably never exchanged so much as a single word with Cha Dohyeon.

 

“I was in his class last year, and our homeroom teacher played favourites so fucking obviously. What the hell did he see in that rude bastard?”

 

“Idiot. If I were a teacher, I’d rather be in charge of someone like him than someone like you too. He gets good grades, does what he’s told, and forget all that for a second. Look at his face. His face. What the fuck are you planning to do with yours that you insist on carrying it around on top of your neck?”

 

“What the fuck did you say, bastard?”

At the small commotion, the class president turned around and glared at them. With a slight frown, he swept his eyes over each of the people gathered at the back before turning away again. He clearly wanted to tell them to shut up, but since they weren’t the sort who would listen anyway, he had apparently decided it wasn’t worth bothering. Most of what Eunho heard beside him was indiscriminate criticism of Cha Dohyeon. It wasn’t exactly wrong, but there was no chance Dohyeon, who was meticulous about maintaining his image, would ever have shown his true self in front of those idiots.

 

Maybe it was because Eunho could sense the faint jealousy underlying every word they said, but a quiet snigger kept threatening to escape him.

 

“Anyway, that bastard must have life on fucking easy mode. He’s handsome, he’s got a great body. The fucker was an athlete, and now he’s good at studying too? Isn’t that basically fucking cheating?”

 

“That’s why the girls go so crazy over him. Annoying bastard.”

 

This time, Eunho felt people glancing over from the side. Not that he could blame them. Aside from the principal’s voice droning on as he read out the wording on the certificate, every irritating sound in the classroom was coming from those idiots’ mouths. Could these bastards seriously not read the room?

 

Apparently oblivious to the sharp looks being thrown their way, they showed no sign of running out of bullshit. Eunho’s brows drew together automatically. By their third year of high school, students were no longer intimidated by delinquent wannabes covered in piercings who bragged about smoking and drinking. With the enormous wall of the CSAT looming in front of them, what frightened them most wasn’t some troublemaker pretending to be a third-rate thug. It was their own uncertain future and their exam scores.

 

“Yeo Eunho, is he a rude bastard to you too? Didn’t you say you and Cha Dohyeon have been friends since you were kids?”

 

“Isn’t that fucker fucking terrifying? Every now and then I pass him in the corridor and, fuck, he looks down at me like I’m some kind of insect. It’s not like I ever did anything to him….”

 

“Idiot, that’s because it’s you. You think he’d act like that towards his own friend?”

 

“Who knows? Maybe he acts differently with him. Hey, Yeo Eunho. Don’t you know anything?”

 

Eunho had left them to snigger amongst themselves, only for the target to somehow shift onto him. It wasn’t particularly unusual. Whether they were delinquents or model students, girls or boys, Cha Dohyeon was a subject everyone seemed to be interested in.

 

“What would I know? I see the same thing you lot do.”

 

“No, I mean something like he’s more careless than he looks, or he’s actually filthy. There’s got to be something only you know. Hell, even something like his dick being the size of a finger.”

 

Gunwoo raised his little finger as he made the crude joke, and Jaewon sniggered beside him. Watching them laugh themselves stupid was pathetic. These were exactly the sort of bastards who would be falling over themselves to suck up to Cha Dohyeon if he were standing in front of them, yet the moment he wasn’t around, they suddenly overflowed with confidence. Eunho was beginning to understand why the class president had looked over at them like that.

 

“I’m going to sleep, so shut the fuck up and piss off, you bastards.”

 

There was no reason to listen to any more of their nonsense. When Eunho dismissed them with a fed-up expression, the boys awkwardly leaning against the nearby desks returned to their seats. He turned back towards the television. Cha Dohyeon was still standing there, posture perfectly straight.

 

━━━━ ✦ ━━━━

 

Calling Cha Dohyeon the son of his mum’s friend didn’t quite describe their relationship. Childhood friend was much closer. Dohyeon’s father and Eunho’s dad had been high-school classmates. They had started married life at around the same time and settled down in the same neighbourhood. After enough nights of the two men drinking together and coming home late, or disappearing off on fishing trips only to return at dawn the next day, their wives had naturally grown close as well.

 

Apparently, Eunho’s mum had even had the conception dream for Dohyeon’s older sister, who was quite a bit older than him. That alone should give some idea of how close the families were. Anyway, Eunho and Dohyeon had been born and raised in the same neighbourhood. Nineteen years already.

 

In other words, they hadn’t spent any real time apart since they were toddling around in nappies. And speaking as someone who had watched that bastard from beside him for all nineteen of those years, Eunho could say one thing with certainty. Cha Dohyeon wasn’t amazing. He was fucking relentless. Extremely fucking relentless.

When they were in their third year of middle school, they had once saved up their pocket money and bought a games console. At the time, an online game where players chose between two opposing races and waged war against each other was hugely popular, but the two of them had become obsessed with console games instead. There was something addictive about following a carefully constructed story while progressing purely through your own skill with the controls. The problem was that it was a single-player game.

 

Whenever one of them played, the other had no choice but to lie around reading comics. Because of that, getting home from school first became the greatest competition of their lives at the time. To cut a long story short, the person who usually ended up lying there reading comics until he got bored enough to fall asleep was Eunho. He would finish supplementary classes, rush through cleaning duty and race home, only to find Cha Dohyeon already stretched across his bed playing the game as though he owned the place.

 

Even on days when Eunho skipped cleaning altogether and pedalled his bicycle home like his life depended on it, the result was the same. One day, thinking, Surely I’ll beat him home today, Eunho even skipped supplementary lessons and strolled home at his leisure. Completely unaware that Cha Dohyeon was already inside, changing into comfortable clothes. Eunho later discovered that Dohyeon had negotiated with his homeroom teacher and arranged to leave school immediately after regular lessons. Apparently, he had explained that studying alone in a study room suited him better than attending supplementary classes.

 

It was one of those moments when Dohyeon’s usual good behaviour paid off. If Eunho had tried saying the same thing, his teacher would have told him to stop talking bollocks and dragged him away by the ear. Cha Dohyeon used the extra hour or two he gained every afternoon entirely on gaming. What was even more ridiculous was that, in the middle of all that, he still kept the promise he had made to his teacher to improve his grades.

 

Even now, Eunho had no idea how the hell that had been possible. Back then, Cha Dohyeon simply hadn’t possessed enough hours in the day. The bastard ate and slept at Eunho’s house five days out of seven. To this day, Eunho couldn’t begin to guess when he had found the time to study.

 

Anyway, after playing obsessively like that for a while, even the game eventually began to lose its appeal. Especially once they reached the point where the story progression slowed to a crawl. The game rapidly became tedious because, no matter how many times they tried, they simply couldn’t clear the final stage. Thinking, If I can just beat this, it’s over, might keep someone trying for a day or two. But after several days of staring at nothing but the words GAME OVER, even the most patient person would eventually lose their temper.

 

And Eunho had never been particularly patient to begin with. The moment the game became more stressful than enjoyable, he lost interest completely. At the time, his philosophy was simple: if something you were doing for fun only made you angry, there was no reason to waste energy on it. Apparently, that philosophy belonged to Eunho alone.

 

Cha Dohyeon didn’t seem to understand the concept of giving up. He played even after Eunho fell asleep beside him while messing around on his phone. If Eunho went out at the weekend to take care of something, Dohyeon would let himself into the empty house and challenge the boss alone. One day he played with a strategy guide running beside him, his eyes darting back and forth between it and the game. Another time he played standing up. Once, he even tried working the joystick with his left hand.

 

Watching him hit the retry button while simultaneously sighing and swearing, what had Eunho thought? Looking back now, he could admit it. It had seemed less like determination and more like obsession. Anyway, after pouring an entire month into it, Cha Dohyeon finally defeated the boss and managed to see the ending. After that, Eunho made a decision. He would never compete with Cha Dohyeon over anything pointless again.

 

Watching the bastard practically barricade himself inside Eunho’s bedroom for a month had taught him an important lesson.

 

Cha Dohyeon was fucking insane.

 

If Eunho ever went up against a lunatic like that, he would inevitably be the one whose energy ran out first, leaving him collapsed on the floor while Dohyeon kept going. Cha Dohyeon had always been like that. If there was something he wanted, he would get his hands on it somehow. Once he decided to do something, he would see it through to the bitter end, no matter what happened.

 

He was the complete opposite of Eunho, who became interested in things easily and grew bored of them just as quickly.

 

━━━━ ✦ ━━━━

 

[The above student has demonstrated outstanding achievement in the June Mock Examination and is therefore presented with this award….] 

 

And today, Cha Dohyeon’s relentless personality had finally reached its peak. It had only been last summer that the boy who had been selected as the regional representative for the National Sports Festival announced that he was quitting taekwondo because of an injury and a slump. If he had carried on, he almost certainly would have gone to university on an athletic scholarship and might even have had a shot at an Olympic medal.

 

Instead, he had changed the course of his entire future in an instant. It was the kind of decision that would have earned him a thorough smacking on the back if his mother had heard Eunho describe it that way. Even Eunho’s parents had tried several times to persuade Dohyeon to reconsider, but by then, Dohyeon had already finished agonising over the decision. His mind was made up.

 

After dropping that bombshell, he started locking himself away in a study room after school. Since he could no longer apply to university through the athletic admissions route, he decided to study his way into university instead. He stopped playing the football he loved. He stopped coming over to Eunho’s house for pointless reasons.

 

As though he had never once worn down the threshold of Eunho’s bedroom by constantly wandering in and lazing around, the most he did now was occasionally come over for a meal at the weekend. At first, Eunho had thought, Let’s see how fucking long this lasts. Then Dohyeon gradually became harder and harder to see, until at some point, spending their time separately simply became normal. Eunho started hanging around with a new group of friends, while Cha Dohyeon was busy living his own life.

 

Anyway, after suddenly changing his goal like that, exactly one year after he had begun studying seriously, Cha Dohyeon stood in the broadcasting room, receiving an award for his mock exam results. Sure, Dohyeon had always been diligent, and apparently he hadn’t completely abandoned his studies even when taekwondo had been his priority. But was someone really allowed to stroll in and take first place in the entire school that easily?

 

It was practically an insult to every hardworking student in South Korea. For Eunho in particular, whose parents seemed convinced that every high school student in the world ought to be capable of doing whatever Cha Dohyeon did, it was enough to drive him fucking insane. The principal’s droning finally came to an end, and the students who had been standing in a line on the screen turned around together. 

 

Among the faces now positioned in front of the camera to bow, Cha Dohyeon’s stood out immediately. His thick eyebrows and sharp eyes could easily have made him look cold, but the corners of his mouth naturally tilted upwards even when his expression was blank, softening his overall appearance. That annoying bastard was, if Eunho was being truthful, pretty fucking handsome. Just as Jaewon had said, it was grossly unfair that someone tall and well-built also got to have a decent face. 

 

There was, however, one comforting fact.

 

Cha Dohyeon was completely fucking insane. Not merely a little crazy. Properly, thoroughly fucking insane. Eunho would say it again.

 

Cha Dohyeon was more persistent and relentless than anyone could possibly imagine. In all nineteen years of Eunho’s life, he had never met another human being so obsessively tenacious.