After the session ended and everyone dispersed, only Gwak Do-jin remained.
Kang Hyeon watched him while sipping his whiskey.
His eyes were different from usual.
The eyes of a man who has already resolved on something.
“Professor.”
“What, thirsty for a drink again?”
“Thank you for the liquor that time.”
“If you're only going to talk without bringing the money for it, go away.”
Even at the blunt joke, Gwak Do-jin bent at the waist and bowed.
Kang Hyeon felt it.
This one has made up his mind completely.
To throw off, at last, the ill-fitting clothes of a third-rate thug and go back to what he was.
Yes. That suits you.
Better than barking clumsily.
“Everything you've taught me, I'm sincerely grateful for. Thanks to you I learned what the basics are, and what I'd been missing.”
It sounded less like thanks than a farewell.
‘He's prepared for expulsion.’
Rather than watch Baek Yu-yeon go on being jerked around, he had decided to throw the Academy away instead.
But Kang Hyeon did not bother to stop him or press him on it.
Second-guessing a decision reached after bone-carving deliberation is no courtesy to a martial artist.
“I don't know what it is, but it seems you've made your decision firmly.”
“Yes.”
Gwak Do-jin bit down on his lip.
He had no regrets.
But a certain wistfulness remained.
Because when he had seen Kang Hyeon perform the Three Powers Sword Art a moment ago, his heart had run hot for the first time in a long while.
Kang Hyeon had shown him exactly the overwhelming presence he had wanted to reach when he first took up a sword.
“Might I ask one thing?”
“Speak.”
“Even if I should stop being an Academy cadet, could I still receive your teaching?”
A brief silence fell.
Gulp.
Swallowing a mouthful of drink, Kang Hyeon answered.
“You don't pay for the liquor, and now you want to take the class without paying tuition either? Cha Yu-sik was the same earlier. Not a shred of shame among you.”
“Didn't you tell me I was an exception? That I couldn't skip class. I was taught that a man doesn't speak from both sides of his mouth.”
The truth was that no matter whose class Gwak Do-jin had sat through, however impressive the professor, it had never made him want to sit through it again.
But Kang Hyeon's class was different.
He wanted to keep attending.
He felt he understood why private tutoring flourished outside.
A certainty that even if he gave up the Academy diploma, remaining Kang Hyeon's student would be enough.
“You seem to be under a misapprehension, mongrel.”
“Sorry?”
“When exactly have we ever held class during the regular class hour?”
“......!”
Gwak Do-jin's pupils flew wide.
The regular class was Saturday at ten.
Which meant every other session was open to attendance by someone who was not a cadet.
“......Thank you, Professor. I'll be going, then.”
Gwak Do-jin turned quickly away so that the redness rising in his eyes would not be caught.
Of course, there was no chance of Kang Hyeon missing it.
‘Tch. A grown man, in tears.’
***
The alley behind the women's dormitory.
Someone was approaching Gwak Do-jin cautiously where he leaned against the wall.
A cap pulled down low, a white mask.
“What have you called me out for this time, senior?”
It was Baek Yu-yeon.
She was plainly dressed to avoid somebody, and Gwak Do-jin was actually reassured by the sight.
‘She hasn't stamped the contract yet!’
Otherwise, what reason would she have to avoid Hwang Min-woo?
“I told you, didn't I? Not to interfere. Why do you keep coming to find me?”
“The contract?”
Gwak Do-jin asked evenly.
He needed to know for certain.
“Haa.”
Baek Yu-yeon let out a short sigh.
Guilt ached sharply in one corner of her chest.
‘The senior who was ruined trying to save me.’
She could not stand by and watch him be expelled, and she wanted to warn him against turning into a thug.
“Listen carefully, senior.”
So she drew a firm line.
“Because you are the man who saved my life, I am going to do everything within my power to see you graduate safely. That's my responsibility and my duty.”
“......”
“So live your own life, senior. Stop going bad and going astray, and attend your classes diligently. If only for your grandmother's sake, you shouldn't be doing this, should you?”
After a brief silence, Gwak Do-jin answered.
“I'm not going astray anymore.”
“Sorry?”
“I said I'm not living like a thug. I've resolved it. So answer me.”
Gwak Do-jin took a step closer and asked.
“That ten-year slave contract. Did you sign it?”
“Haa, that.”
Baek Yu-yeon's lips parted.
“I didn't.”
“You didn't?”
“Actually, I couldn't.”
Baek Yu-yeon muttered, pressing at her brow.
Did not and could not are entirely different things.
“How could you not? Did that Hwang Min-woo just sit still?”
“I nearly put my thumbprint down that time, actually. But......”
A flicker of disbelief crossed Baek Yu-yeon's face.
“You know that contract professor who came in recently, the one who carries a whiskey bottle everywhere?”
“Professor Kang Hyeon?”
“Yes, him. He suddenly appeared out of nowhere, staggering, and went ‘Whoops! I'm drunk!’ and lurched about and spilled the liquor he was holding all over the contract.”
“......What?”
His eyes went as wide as lanterns.
“And it wasn't just once. Hwang Min-woo got furious and printed the contract again after that, and the professor turned up like a ghost again, said his foot had slipped, and tore the thing clean in half.”
“......”
Gwak Do-jin's heart lurched.
“So Hwang Min-woo is absolutely livid about it and stamping around. And after the professor did it twice, I thought, what kind of fate is this, so for now I've been making excuses to put off meeting and running away.”
Listening to Baek Yu-yeon's grumbling, Gwak Do-jin's mind went white.
‘The professor did?’
There was no way for Gwak Do-jin to know that Kang Hyeon had wrecked things because he had marked Baek Yu-yeon for himself.
So the bridge of his nose stung.
‘......He was helping me!’
He was moved.
Steadying his swelling chest, Gwak Do-jin brought up his real business.
This was in fact what he had called her out to say.
“I'm leaving the Academy.”
“......What did you say?”
Baek Yu-yeon's eyes filled with shock.
“Senior! What are you saying now!”
“I'm walking out on my own two feet before I get expelled.”
“I told you I'd stop it somehow.”
“That's exactly it!”
Gwak Do-jin's voice rose slightly.
“I'm leaving because you keep doing that. If you stamp a contract like that, do you think I'd be sincerely grateful?”
“Senior!”
“I'll handle my own life. If I'm expelled, every reason Hwang Min-woo has to threaten you disappears too!”
“Doesn't it gall you at all, senior?”
“It used to. It doesn't anymore.”
Gwak Do-jin genuinely thought so.
They say fortune in life is unpredictable.
If his life had not fallen into the gutter, would he ever have sat in Professor Kang Hyeon's class?
“I've already found my own way through. So please, just think about yourself. Don't ruin your life using me as an excuse.”
Just as their emotions clashed and the air pulled taut.
Clap, clap, clap.
The sound of slow applause rang out.
“Oh dear, we've got a tear-jerking youth drama on our hands.”
Gwak Do-jin and Baek Yu-yeon's heads turned at once toward the sound.
A man walking out of the darkness with a rigid expression.
It was Hwang Min-woo.
He looked considerably angry.
“So this makes me the villain, does it? Fine, fuck it. I'll play the villain properly for you.”
He came sneering, apparently with his eyes turned inside out by jealousy.
He looked at Gwak Do-jin.
“Senior Gwak, walking out on your own two feet?”
And snorted.
“Don't kid yourself, Mad Dog. You think things get easier outside the Academy? Expelled or withdrawn, you think our guild's influence won't reach you however hard you scrape to make a living as a Hunter out there?”
“......”
“And Baek Yu-yeon.”
Hwang Min-woo drew a crisp, uncreased new contract from his coat and waved it.
“That mad drunk of a professor wrecked the contract twice, so this time I had it laminated and printed again. But seeing the two of you being so tender just now has put me in a truly shitty mood.”
Venom settled into Hwang Min-woo's eyes.
“Let's revise it. Not ten years — fifteen. You'll rot in our guild's medical corps for fifteen years. Otherwise I'll have this bastard's arms and legs sawn off so he can't function as a Hunter outside either.”
“Y-You really......!”
Baek Yu-yeon's face went white.
It was then that Gwak Do-jin, who had been listening in silence, opened his mouth.
“Hwang Min-woo.”
He was not worked up as he usually would be.
Because he had resolved it.
Not to live like a thug.
“Originally I was going to walk out of the Academy quietly, on my own two feet.”
Gwak Do-jin cracked his neck left and right.
Crick, crack — the friction of bone rang in the alley.
“But thinking about it, that won't do.”
“What?”
“Let's just make it a clean expulsion.”
“What kind of nonsense are you suddenly......”
Hwang Min-woo's words had not even finished.
Tahp!
In a single stride, Gwak Do-jin closed the distance.
As the lower body he had been drilling planted against the ground, the recoil rose cleanly up through his waist and shoulder.
‘The professor said it.’
That with your feet off the ground you're dead.
That force is drawn up from the earth.
“Senior, don't!”
Baek Yu-yeon stretched out a hand in horror to stop him, but Gwak Do-jin's fist was already cutting the air.
Even thuggery requires basic force to back it up.
Gwak Do-jin had always been well above the likes of Hwang Min-woo in practical combat.
And now a strike with its center perfectly held, thanks to Kang Hyeon's teaching, was delivered!
CRAAAACK!
Hwang Min-woo's head snapped around.
A single blow.
His brain rattled by that weighty blow, Hwang Min-woo fainted without even managing a proper scream.
Silence settled on the alley, and Baek Yu-yeon clapped both hands over her mouth.
“Haa.”
Gwak Do-jin let out a cleansing breath.
“There, you saw. That's a certain expulsion. No self-defense, nothing — I hit him outright.”
“S-Senior. What are you going to do?”
“So don't you dare even think about signing a garbage contract like that.”
The declaration of Gwak Do-jin, martial artist!
Watching from the rooftop, the corner of Kang Hyeon's mouth curled up.
‘He's finally shedding the mongrel.’
***
A short while later.
The infirmary door flew open.
The eyes of the cadets and duty nurses inside snapped as one toward the spot.
The one who had opened the door and come in was Gwak Do-jin.
The Academy's celebrity, Mad Dog.
“Hgk......!”
“What, what's this.”
Slung over his shoulder like a sack of rice was Hwang Min-woo, unconscious with his head lolling.
Behind him followed Baek Yu-yeon, white as a sheet.
“Senior! Don't do this! Please!”
Thud!
Gwak Do-jin flung the Hwang Min-woo he had been carrying roughly onto an empty bed.
“What on earth is going on?”
Hearing the commotion, a woman in a coat came running out from inside the consulting room.
It was Professor Hwang Ye-rim.
“Gwak Do-jin? Have you caused trouble again?”
“Yes, Professor.”
Standing with his back ramrod straight, he spoke without flinching.
“I beat him. It wasn't self-defense or anything — his face just pissed me off, so I beat him outright.”
“What?”
“So.”
Gwak Do-jin looked Hwang Ye-rim straight in the eye.
“Treat him, and convene the disciplinary committee.”