Payback AU: What If

Act 1 - FIRE

The first time Lee Yoohan met Yoon Jay, everything was scorching hot. If he had to recount the event, he could only say the following: "There's fire everywhere."

There was a lump of fire in the sky; the asphalt felt like burning charcoal, and he heard that there was a forest on fire in a foreign country somewhere. At least, that was what Yoohan managed to hear from the first-period teacher before he decided to play hooky from the next period.

Which was a bad decision, really.

Because after he was done playing around with some dropout kids on the corner of xx-street, Yoohan found himself wandering the street amidst the sweltering heat—sweat dropping like a waterfall inside his uniform. He should've just sneaked into the infirmary or something; at least they had air conditioning.

Yoohan was contemplating going to the arcade to cool off before remembering he had no money. So he flopped down on the side of the road, sighing at the weather, boredom, and the weather. It was only early summer but the sun was unforgiving, and people's hearts and minds were full of burning fire, with curse words and eventual fists flying around.

Like the one that happened in the alley next to where he sat down.

The first thing Yoohan noticed was the loud cursing that outdid even the sound of horns from the busy street. No, actually it was the sound of several loud curses. The next thing he noticed, when he eventually took a peek at the alley, was a classic scene that can be seen everywhere on the bad side of the city; several people cornering a single person in the middle of an empty alley.

'From their uniform ... high schooler?' Yoohan stared from afar with interest.

There were four students whose appearance screamed 'thugs!' at the first glance. Well, although any student wandering around at this hour was definitely not a good student. 'Like me,' Yoohan thought. They were hurling out every kind of curse word and insult toward the other student, who, from the look of it, were from different schools. And, as what usually happened in such scenario, the five people began to fight.

"Oh!" Yoohan exclaimed quietly. The fight was more interesting than he thought. When he saw the 4 vs 1 condition, he thought it would be a boring, one-sided beatdown. But that one student was actually ... winning? Even from his position, Yoohan could tell that the other four were struggling against this single person. The way he moved was so précised without any wasted movement that Yoohan felt like he was watching some action scene from a movie. Even the sound coming from the punch and the kick sound like it came out of the TV. What was even more amazing was that when he looked closely, this person was wearing a cast on one of his arms. As someone who had been involved in a fight since his elementary school days, Yoohan felt a surge of admiration toward this high-schooler and clenched his fist as if to cheer on that person.

That is until he saw one of the thugs pull out a folding knife from his pocket.

'Isn't that too much?' he frowned in disagreement and before his mind could comprehend it, his body already move and grabbed the hand of the high-schooler that was about to stab the cast-wearing student from the back.

"What the hell?? Who the fuck are you?!"

The fight was immediately halted by the shout from the knife-wielding guy. Five pairs of eyes, all taller than him, zeroed in on Yoohan. The knife-wielding guy tried to yank his hand from Yoohan's grip to no avail, which prompt him to widen his eyes in surprise.

"Who the fuck is this runt?" one of the other guys frowned and changed his target from the cast-wearing student to Yoohan and about to grab the back of his shirt collar, but Yoohan beat him to it and kicked his shin so hard that the man keeled over. Then he tightened his grip on the hand that wielded the knife until the guy hissed painfully and dropped the knife.