The Best of Tomorrow

Chapter 13 – Part 2

The sound of the thumping song boomed through the wall so I could see how much the TV volume was turned up. It was 2 AM.

I walked to the wall while clenching my fists and banged my hand against the wall. “Don’t make the TV sound!”

Then the sound of the thumping got louder as I kept hitting the wall, asking to turn down the TV volume coming from the other side.

“Turn it off!!!”

I stared at the wall with a dissatisfied face then banged my hand against the wall once again.

I took off my socks and my clothes. I tried to wear the sleepwear hanging on the chair, but it smelled bad, so I put it in the laundry container and opened the drawer.

I searched for clothes to wear at home and found clothes that were not mine in the drawer.

“…Huh?”

I took out the clothes at the bottom. My heart pounded. I opened the clothes wide. It was gray gym pants. There was a white solid line on both sides, and a symbol mark of Jagam High School, which was embroidered on the right pocket.

It was a sportswear from Jagam High School that I bought from Seon-jae through a secondhand country seller.

“Why is this here…?” I thought I was mistaken, so I looked closely at the symbol mark. It was really the symbol of Jagam High School.

I thought, “Why is it here?” and tilted my head in confusion.

I had bought this in the past when I went back, and I couldn’t explain it.

It’s not a dream. I really went there, I threw the clothes on the floor and rushed to search for the pockets of my clothes. I took out the pocket watch and held it in my hand as I pushed the lid open and checked the time.

The hour hand was at the 2 o’clock position. To be exact, it was a little past 2 o’clock.

How did I go back in time? I was lying on the bed and crying, as far as I remembered. I sat down on the bed and looked at the pocket watch.

No matter how much I looked at it, it’s just a watch, but when it moved, it lit up and returned to its original time. But what was it like when I went back in time?

It reminded me of that time… it was after the New Year’s Greetings rang everywhere.

I looked at the watch in my hand. There was no button to change the time in the watch. Well, it is one of a kind…

I rubbed my thumb over the clock’s surface. As the hard glass was pressed, light leaked out from the frame with a squeaking sound.

“Uhh?”

I opened my eyes to the sound that I had heard before.

“Here we go!”

Gradually, the light expanded and suddenly became bigger and filled the room. It was so bright that I had to close my eyes and screamed. “Here we go!!!!”

After a while, the light that had just exploded a while ago, disappeared in an instant. The intensity of the light exploding could be measured with my eyelids tightly closed.

02 Second Time Travel

“Hey!”

Someone grabbed my shoulder and shook it. I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar voice. I made eye contact with a girl whose eyes were gray, as if she was wearing colored lenses.

The face I was looking at, glanced to her right. When I followed her gaze, a woman with a very disapproving face was looking at me with her arms folded.

“Where are you going? I asked if you are Kim Chun-baek, Ms. Kim.”

My mouth opened without my knowledge. The children, who were chewing gum, surrounded me. Those with yellow and red hair seemed to have a hot tempered personality like her.

I lowered my gaze… I was wearing a school uniform skirt, a navy blue vest, a scarlet tie, and a yellow coat.

I am right, I have returned to the past.

“Oh, I’m back! I’m back!” I jumped around and clapped. It felt cold and freeing.

“She just said she was going, but now she’s back. She has lost it.”

I turned to look at the face I was facing earlier.

A familiar face.

The mascara on the eyelashes was clumped together. She was a student, whom I had encountered once in Jagam High School.

Oh, my God, what’s this? Did I just get dragged by them?

Thud

There was a sound and I was pushed back by my shoulder. The girl, standing with her hand on my shoulder, had hit me with the tip of her fist.

It hurts…

I took backward steps as she approached me. The heel behind my shoes touched the wall, perhaps I was driven to a corner.

Damn it!

I didn’t think I’d ever done anything at her school. Was it because I changed some parts of the past? Why did I come back to such a corner?

My face broke into tears. “Why are you doing this?” I asked with a face that was as resentful as possible and with a terrified expression.

Some of the children had been talking about it. What did they say?

One said, “You should pierce your ears.”

So, the incident started because of Kim Chun-baek, who became a hot topic of conversation between Ryu Seon-jae and Baek In-hyuk.

Despite attending co-education, Seon-jae never approached anyone because he had no close female students and was shy. He hated talking about people, and he didn’t talk about women in particular.

He seemed to be talking about one person, Seon-jae said it was Kim Chun-baek, and Baek In-hyuk even said, “Carry her on Seon-jae’s back,” adding, “Children who liked Seon-jae got interested in who she was.”

“I saw you on the street. Ryu Seon-jae was with you. Seon-jae followed you and you ran away. It doesn’t make sense for Seon-jae to go after you.”

“Really?” When I put my hand on my chest and asked with a completely clueless face, my head was pushed back.

The yellow haired guy pushed my forehead with his index finger and shouted threateningly, “Why are you pretending not to know?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

I bowed my head with my hands clasped together politely. If I had a whistle, I would’ve blown it. At that time, a soccer ball rolled into the alley.