Since Sky Park was a place he frequented, he knew the location very well. It was a very small park, so there was only one place to meet someone.
‘Underneath the red streetlamp.’
In Sky Park there were streetlamps that were giving off orange o yellow light, but the streetlamp in front of a big tree gave off an unusually red light.
There was no doubt that the girl who had written the note meant to meet that place. However, apprehension filled him when he arrived.
‘Is this a trap that Han-joo sprung and ordered the bullies to get revenge on me?’
The moment he thought of that, sweat started trickling down his back and an impulse to go home entered him. However, he shook his head in the end.
‘Even if I do fight those guys again, I won’t lose. Let’s not be afraid.’
Before, he would have run away in fear, but this time he had strength on his side; more than anything, he could judge that he would win against Han-joo thanks to his intelligence. Rationality allowed him to beat the fear and worry.
‘Not to mention the fact that the handwriting was a girl’s, hahaha.’
There was n.o.body standing underneath the red streetlamp, perhaps due to the fact that he’d hurried over as soon as the evening study hall had ended.
‘I guess I’ll just wait, then.’
Seung-ho stood underneath the streetlamp and waited while looking at the note that he’d received.
“Eeuh, it’s cold.”
He’d been waiting for 10 minutes. As the early spring night began to deepen, the last cold spell began to turn particularly severe. Even though it was already really cold, the wind began to blow as well.
‘Why isn’t she coming?’
Due to the abnormal climate changes, it felt like winter even though spring had come. The hand that was holding the note began freezing, so Seung-ho stuffed it in his pocket, along with the note.
11:30PM. Twenty minutes had pa.s.sed since he’d arrived. Even if one walked leisurely from the school to the park, it would have taken maybe 10 minutes, but 20 minutes had already pa.s.sed.
‘Maybe someone was playing a joke.’
Seung-ho shortly became sullen. Since third years had to stay in the evening study hall until 11PM, he was tired and felt sorry for himself for waiting outside in the shivering cold, essentially wasting his time, and going home later than he would have.
‘Just 10 more minutes.’
He told himself that he would go home if the person didn’t come in 10 minutes. Since he would have waited for 30 minutes, he would have done his duty as a man.
Tired out, he collapsed onto a nearby bench. He didn’t even want to take out his cellphone. Bowing his head, he blankly got lost in his thoughts.
‘Yeah, who even confesses with a letter these days?’
The thirty minutes he’d given himself had pa.s.sed. The current time was 11:40PM. It’d be around midnight when he arrived at home. If he didn’t hurry, he would lose the last bus home.
“Whew.”
As he sighed deeply and stood up, someone grabbed his shoulder. From the feeling on his shoulder, it felt like a small hand. It was a girl.
“Excuse me…”
It was a female voice. Seung-ho’s heart started pounding. Controlling his expression as best he could, Seung-ho turned around.
‘Huh?’
It was So-hee, a female student shared a cla.s.s with Seung-ho for the first time. She wasn’t extremely pretty, but she was smaller than 160cm, had cute eyes, a bit of a raised nose, and small lips. In other words, she was on the pretty side but was so timid that he’d never seen her talk.
He couldn’t focus on the lesson that day, so he’d looked through the phonebook with all his cla.s.smates’ faces all throughout evening study hall; that was how he remembered her name.
“I’m sorry. The academy suddenly had a supplementary lesson… I didn’t know I’d end this late.”
As soon as he heard her words, joy flowed within Seung-ho. Not because the girl who’d looked for him was So-hee, but because he’d found out that it wasn’t a joke and was actually someone’s sincere feelings.
“I’m really sorry.”
So-hee bowed her head and apologized.
“It’s fine. I just arrived, too.”
He’d said something cool for once. The fact that he’d remembered the line from a drama he’d seen before was totally a coincidence. It was definitely not a line that he’d thought up beforehand.
“Y-yeah?”
So-hee raised her head a bit and looked at him. However, Seung-ho’s face had already turned bright red from the cold. No matter who looked at him, they see at a glance that he’d been waiting there for a while.
“Why did you want to see me?”
Honestly, Seung-ho had already guessed the answer. The heart in the note was still vivid in his head. He’d asked in order to be certain.
“T-that…”
As if she was embarra.s.sed, So-hee bowed her head. Her face and ears reddened, and her fingers fidgeted, not knowing what to do.
Seung-ho was nervous as well. He was about to hear ‘I like you’ from someone for the first time. Because he was so anxious, his lips started to dry up.
“Seung-ho!”
So-hee abruptly raised her head and called Seung-ho.
“Yes?!”
Surprised, Seung-ho’s voice cracked.
‘Ah, s.h.i.t.’
However, So-hee didn’t care and held out her phone.
“G-give me your number!”
“My heart’s not ready y- what?”
“Can you give me your number?”
Seung-ho had started to yell out his answer without realizing it, but the question was different than what he’d expected as he thought about it.
‘Give my number? After calling me all the way out here?’
Seung-ho wondered what kind of situation he was in.
“My phone number?”
“Yeah. Can’t you?”
Seung-ho’s head descended into chaos.
‘Don’t people usually confess their feelings in this type of situation? Ah, do I have it wrong? Is it weird to ask for people’s numbers at school?”
The thought that he’d waited 30 minutes for a phone number request, not for a confession, felt extremely futile.
‘No. She’s still interested in me, I can’t get too arrogant.’
Seung-ho still couldn’t understand, so he asked So-hee once more.
“Couldn’t you have asked me for my number in cla.s.s?”
“I’m a bit very shy…”
“No, no. I meant that the cla.s.s phonebook has all our numbers in it…”
“Ah, really?”
“Aaaaaaaaargh!”
Seung-ho buried his head in his pillow and screamed. A roar of joy? No, it was a howl of embarra.s.sment.
He’d misunderstood the phone number exchange for a confession and had been antic.i.p.ating and excited the entire day. If someone found out, they would be sure to make fun of him.
‘Still, at least I didn’t get stood up.’
It was better than returning home, alone and forlorn. If he had done that, he would have kicked the blanket all night and wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep. Tonight, he would merely nudge the blanket a little and sleep fitfully.
However, there was something that nagged at him. It was the quest received when So-hee had sent the first text message.
QUEST:
Get a confession from So-hee.
Reward: 10 points
Since he wouldn’t lose anything even if he failed, he’d pressed ‘Accept’. However, guilt filled him at the thought that he would be playing with someone’s feelings because of a quest.
‘I’ll never act extra nice to So-hee or do things that will make her heart waver towards me because of the quest.’
While completing numerous quests, this was a promise that he’d made to himself. Don’t hurt anyone because of a quest. Of course there were exceptions, but he was trying his best to keep the promise.
‘How are my stats again?’
Seung-ho clicked the yellow icon.
STATS MENU
Name: Choi Seung-ho
Career: High School Student
Height: 186 cm (+ -)
Weight: 73 kg (+ -)
Strength: 35 (+ -)
Agility: 12 (+ -)
Stamina: 13 (+ -)
Intelligence: 21 (+ -)
Appearance: 41 (+ -)
Charm: 32 (+ -)
Luck: 5 (-)
Basketball Dribble: 4 (+ -)
Basketball Shooting Accuracy: 13 (+ -)
Basketball Pa.s.sing Accuracy: 6 (+ - )
Left Vision: 1.5 (+ -)
Right Vision: 1.5 (+ -)
--
Available points: 0
‘Ah, I used too much on basketball.’
It seemed as if he’d invested excessively because he’d really wanted to do well in the game. He’d raised his intelligence, but it couldn’t do its job when faced when impulsive decisions.
At that moment, a very good idea pa.s.sed by Seung-ho’s mind.
‘Ah, then I can make this statistic, right?’
Seung-ho opened the ability modification panel right away and pressed the plus b.u.t.ton.
“Self-control.”
After confirming that the statistic had been created, he checked the stats menu again.
STATS MENU
Name: Choi Seung-ho
Career: High School Student
Height: 186 cm (+ -)
Weight: 73 kg (+ -)
Strength: 35 (+ -)
Agility: 12 (+ -)
Stamina: 13 (+ -)
Intelligence: 21 (+ -)
Appearance: 41 (+ -)
Charm: 32 (+ -)
Luck: 5 (-)
Basketball Dribble: 4 (+ -)
Basketball Shooting Accuracy: 13 (+ -)
Basketball Pa.s.sing Accuracy: 6 (+ - )
* Self-Control: 2 (+ -)
Left Vision: 1.5 (+ -)
Right Vision: 1.5 (+ -)
--
Available points: 0
His self-control was extremely low. No wonder he couldn’t make the right decision when an impulse hit him.
‘Whew, I should raise self-control before anything else.’
He’d thought that raising his intelligence would be the end of it, but the ability only allowed him to think deeply and deduce, so it helped with studying and review; on the other hand, it didn’t change him enough to affect reality.
Realistically, the most useful statistic would be ‘Judgement’, but unfortunately Seung-ho hadn’t thought of that yet.
‘I’d better raise self-control first with the reward from the next quest. At the very least, I have to have at least 10 points before I can act normally.’
While he’d been raising his intelligence a while back, Seung-ho had realized that 10 was the average number.
‘When I was raising my strength and measuring my grasping power, I definitely remember my grasping strength being the average for my age when the strength was at 10.’
As he was thinking, another statistic popped up in his mind.
‘Do I have to make a memory statistic? Can’t I just make do with intelligence?’
He vowed to test that later. The more statistics there were in the stats menu, the harder it would be to see, so it’d be better to test things when he needed them.
“Guys! Something amazing’s going to happen!”
Sang-wook made a fuss while entering the cla.s.sroom. Because he had such a loud voice, not only Seung-ho’s friends but the other kids as well focused on him.
“What is it?”
Sang-wook grinned as he pulled out a paper.
“We’re going on a school trip!”
He was holding out a questionnaire about possible places for the school trip. A school trip for test-takers; it was an impossible and unthinkable thing.
“What are you talking about? What third year would go on a school trip?”
“Yeah, did you see the announcement for the first years?”
Sang-wook shook his head confidently.
“The new Ministry of Education guidelines allow us to have some sort of activity every year, so we’re going on a school trip this time according to the Career and Experience forms!”
Seung-ho and the others s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper that Sang-wook was holding and checked for themselves.
It was real. They were really going on a school trip.
‘Awesome.’
Seung-ho began to feel excited with antic.i.p.ation. In the 19 years of his life, this was his first time looking forward to a school trip.