At whichever university, it was common practice to collectively order “department jackets” at the start of the semester.
Usually, the student council of the department in question collected the money first.
Thanks to bulk orders, it was a system that reciprocated with decent fabric and reasonably well-made group apparel, but…
“These bastards are slithering out again? I’m sure I killed them and scattered their ashes, yet here they are?”
The man who, right as the semester began, blew up an entire department’s student council and laughed amidst the ashes as he headed off to the army.
To Gim Chomok, this was an agenda item that screamed, *These bastards are at it again.*
Judging by the number on the uniform of that conscienceless next-shift part-timer, it looked like he’d enrolled early this year…
“While I was in the army, did some student council members who enlisted before me return?”
He still vividly remembered how he’d stoked the flames into an inferno and then thrown every last one of them to the wolves.
The moment just three keywords attached—‘After the investigation began,’ ‘Catching the eyes of countless people,’ and ‘Even made the news’¹…
A massive disaster of “internal corruption against outsiders,” unprecedented since the department’s founding—more than enough to get them all scapegoated.
Although the news reported it as an anonymous tip to protect himself,
anyone from the same department obviously couldn’t not know that Gim Chomok had pulled the trigger.
Whether that had any effect or not, at least when he left for the army, they weren’t collecting money for department jackets.
Now something that didn’t exist is suddenly back? Then as always, there is only one answer.
“These bastards must’ve thought I was going to stay in the army forever, huh?”
A mad dog that bites anything that slightly displeases him—they must have been confident he wouldn’t come back.
Even if he didn’t have many close friends in the department, there was one guy from the same unit who was close to him.
“Ah, shit. Come to think of it, that bastard Jeong Ilhwan was an SNS addict… I should’ve realized when he was always going to the PC room².”
Even if he hadn’t sold him out, it made sense if information had spread naturally as they casually traded stories.
“Let’s see, I caused the incident recently… before that was the semester opening… so did it spread around the time people were depressed after the law changed?”
There’s no way they would’ve had the guts to pickpocket the kids’ money while fully aware that a mad dog would be returning to campus.
The moment they realized he could get caught in a “dual-service” situation once again,
thinking, *Huh? That guy’s getting dragged away again? It’s our world now,* and then causing the incident was the slightly more rational thought.
They probably hadn’t paid money at the time of admission, but there must have been the opinion that they should wear the department jacket because “everyone else does.”
Using the “illusion of truth effect,” it would have been perfect to push the narrative that it boosted departmental unity and kept them from standing out.
“Then I should enjoy myself a bit… right before finals are over?”
Did they just collect money on a purely voluntary basis because they envied what everyone else was doing, without forcing anyone?
Then it would be a perfectly legitimate group purchase, and nothing would happen, but…
Something that could’ve ended as a petty grudge after accumulating stacks of annoyance over why someone didn’t pay money,
had been escalated into a massive disaster where all related parties burned to death—if you’re talking to the last survivor of those idiots in our department?
“If they’d only put up a public poster right in front of everyone ranting that I didn’t pay. That’d be the second disaster.”
A legendary psycho in that department’s history who returned as the biggest perpetrator after being the victim.
That bastard about whom his close friend said, “I’d rather desert than fight him.” Gim Chomok smiled eerily.
***
If a target you want to strike a heavy blow against appears, the first thing to do is not to hit it.
“You have to figure out exactly what this bastard is up to first. That’s the standard.”
Hitting them will likely inflict only short-term damage, but if you paint the bigger picture?
You can create a massive disaster that fills their life with shame and pain, making them regret it forever,
and make others unable to even think of copycat crimes after seeing them hang themselves in court instead of on a cross.
Similarly, in the process of gathering information on others, charging straight ahead is amateur.
If you get your hands on old contacts in your phone and ask outright, rumors about yourself will spread, but—
“Now! For the first round at the makgeolli house, I’m buying, so drink up. Drink!!”
“Kya… as expected of Chomok! You still remembered this makgeolli place!!”
Dragging in old acquaintances under the pretext of *Since I’m discharged, let’s see each other’s faces before I return to school?*
Isn’t this just part of the daily life of college students for whom drinking is a passive skill?
Moreover, those in the same year as Gim Chomok are a pack of returning students who always have to preserve their dignity as seniors to their juniors!
“Wow… how did you know our pockets have been so tight lately and call us like this?!”
The seniors who served as their meal tickets had graduated or taken a leave of absence,
and with those damn juniors increasing year by year, how they must miss these free drinking sessions.
“Hey, my pockets are tight too, but it’s been a while, so I’m buying this time!”
“Yeah, yeah! Since there won’t be a next time, we have to milk it all today! Now, glasses up!”
Recalling the ancestors’ old saying that if it’s free, they’d even down sodium hydroxide in one shot.
Getting to gratefully drink a large quantity of ethanol and a small amount of methanol is only human, isn’t it?
“Hey hey, don’t pull your glass away! You don’t have to mix it, but you can’t leave the bottom dregs!”
“Ugh… whoo! One shot… not easy.”
Naturally, the rules of the drinking table depend entirely on who’s buying the alcohol.
Right now, reflecting the will of the booze-provider—greater than any landlord—skipping the “cheers” was impossible from the start.
“Hey! I came after getting the call! Free booze?! I gotta join too!”
“Oh my, since you’re late, shall we start by emptying a whole *doe* on the verge of overflowing?”
It’s not like this is a world where lives are wagered in a card game, yet the mid-joining penalty is strictly enforced.
“Uuurgh… I feel sick… uwek!!”
“Aigoo, have I gotten old… I used to drink without caring about round one or round two…”
Before the expulsion order for elementary school kids could even drop at PC cafés, their livers’ detoxification abilities had dropped first.
Their faces were red, their stomachs unsettled, and their feet traced the shape of the character 八 rather than walking in a straight line.
“Tsk, these weak bastards. How are they already collapsing after emptying a mere ten kettles?”
The only man who, without filtering the “final result of grain fermentation” from above, used it unstintingly as fuel for his abilities.
Gim Chomok looked at them with pitiful eyes and transported them to the vicinity of a certain “oft-seen convenience store.”
“Hey, go in and feed the kids something. Ice cream or chocolate milk or whatever.”
On the surface, the suggestion was a supplement of fat and sugar that would help with tomorrow’s hangover.
If you only heard the words, it might seem like the consideration of a normal person who still had a bit of kindness left in his heart, but…
The convenience store where he worked part-time was a place that deep-fried instant food in old oil well in advance.
And the people who had been downing drinks hard with him had consumed a massive amount of alcohol in less than two hours.
To acute alcohol poisoning patients whose stomachs were on the verge of bursting, he suddenly wafted the smell of old frying oil?
—Ooh, what’s this? Is he telling us to properly flip our stomachs inside out?
Gim Chomok, claiming he was completely fine and not entering the store, leaned his body against a street tree.
Not long after, a jackpot he hadn’t expected too much from hit.
“Kyaaaaaaack—!!”
Seeing someone let out such a refreshingly clean scream, you could tell exactly what was unfolding without even looking.
“But shouldn’t they have no time to scream? Smells and situations in a state of emergency… they all spread contagiously, you know?”
It’s a characteristic of the sly human species that has long survived by forming collective societies.
There are cases where the brain instinctively triggers a contagious vomiting reaction like a defense mechanism the moment the person next to you throws up.
“The smell’s there, and so is the instinct… once you give a light push, it explodes in a chain reaction like dominoes.”
After one domino falls, from the mouths of every intoxicated drunk, like a game of bursting water balloons…
The primitive verification hour of instincts, inherited since ancient times, unfolds—a process of checking exactly what they had eaten and drunk…
Ding-a-ling…♬
“Ugh, uaaack!! T-this isn’t it!! I have to get out of here!”
Seeing one acquaintance, who had arrived late and drunk less, urgently open the door and flee,
the inside of the store was clearly already hell itself, beyond any mere battlefield.
“As expected, the GOAT in human beverage history… is it you again? Alcohol.”
—And, the soccer spirit who strangely vomits often… somehow falling behind these days³, but thank you anyway.
Pointing two fingers high to the sky, Gim Chomok, deeply impressed by alcohol’s might,
prayed to some soccer player on the opposite side of the earth to stop copying similar memes while he was at it.
There wasn’t really a connection, but it was probably because that player was the most famous among those who had vomited on the field.
***
Tak, ta-tak, tak-tak…
*Did you get home safe…? After you guys went in, my stomach felt bad too, so I went in first…*
If he just sent quick check-in messages asking whether those not-so-close friends he’d kept in rough contact with had gotten home safely,
the rest of that tragedy was for the next-shift part-timer—who had wasted thirty-five minutes of his life on him—to clean up.
*Lately there was suddenly something like a… “temporary student council,” you know? They asked us whether we wanted to participate.*
*Ah! Those guys who kept saying they’d hold the postponed opening ceremony a month after the semester started?*
Considering the information he’d extracted while feeding them alcohol to the point of unconsciousness, he had already gotten his money’s worth.
“I’ve gathered all the circumstantial evidence. What’s left… is to see how much they embezzled during that short period.”
Ding-a-ling…♬
Comfortably, after organizing everything he had to do in his head,
today as well, to peacefully change shifts at the convenience store, when Gim Chomok opened the front door.
“…Hey! How many times did I tell you to receive the delivery yesterday, yet you didn’t!!”
A middle-aged man’s deeply furrowed face greeted him the moment he entered, but—
“Ah, right. Don’t forget to pay me those thirty-five minutes of overtime from yesterday.”
The world is full of cases where you give someone the benefit of the doubt only to catch your head on the corner of that very doubt.
“…What?! No, you didn’t even follow my orders…!!”
“Why should I work overtime because of one idiot? Don’t forget to calculate it at one-and-a-half times, including that extra sixty percent on the hourly wage.”
As if he had no intention of listening, Gim Chomok dug at his ear and wrapped the convenience store apron around his waist.
“Ugh, what’s this smell. I need to ventilate.”
Leaving the door open for the air near the counter, where a faint sour smell lingered.
“Hey, if you’ve got nothing to do, why don’t you leave? Or well, keep standing there if you want. I need to sit down.”
Gim Chomok demonstrated the exact work attitude that the previous-shift part-timer had shown him yesterday,
and at some point looked mockingly at the store owner—a boiled octopus wearing the skin of “benefiting all mankind.”
“Y-you! Don’t forget to receive the delivery together today…!!”
A strong person completely unable to exert strength up to the point where they can benefit is no longer strong.
A weak person working with eyes fixed on a single romantic ideal, wanting nothing else, is no longer weak. What a strange convenience store.
“Oh dear, it’s one minute before… looks like you’re going to be late today too?”
The highlight was the punishment delivered to the next worker, whose nose tip wasn’t even visible despite the shift change drawing near.
If he didn’t report the situation, he’d clearly rage directly at him, so he had to make the call.
“Hello? The next worker isn’t showing his nose with one minute, no… thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight… seconds left, you see?”
Two consecutive days of tardiness after yesterday—a normal person would issue a “don’t come in starting tomorrow” notice here, but—
*No, the kid is busy at university! He’s doing something like a student council, so he’s short on time!*
From the owner’s perspective, whose goal was to pocket the family allowance in peace, Gim Chomok probably looked like a bastard worth killing.
*The previous part-timer had consideration and tact. What kind of person are you…*
Having to justify his demands for extra hours by comparing him to others, no less.
“Ah, yes. That’s none of my business. I’ll lock the door, put the key in the mailbox, and leave. Good work~”
*…So, while receiving the delivery, about an hour… what?! Hey! Hey!!!*
If the treatment you get in return for work is an empty lunchbox, that doesn’t mean you’ve committed a crime worthy of death.
Putting the employer’s head in that empty lunchbox and sending it to the surviving family is the just order.
“Is that your family or mine? You’re trying to spew nonsense out of your snout.”
Ding-a-ling…♬
Gim Chomok, who had already packed his things while on the phone, closed the convenience store door.
During the roughly thirty-five minutes he’d worked yesterday, approximately six customers had come.
“Either run a business losing six customers every day on average, or go squeeze your relatives.”
Gim Chomok was extremely curious about what time that shameless worker would come tomorrow.
“If you come on time, I’ll start becoming happy from five minutes before…⁴”
He might not be able to become the Little Prince, but he had more than enough confidence to act like a little patient to that damned human.