SpartAce I: School Love Affair

"I don't want to clip your wings and stop you from flying."

Jong Kook has just turned to the alley leading to their house when he notices a black car parked across the street.

He turns his head towards their house and dread immeidtaely spread all throughout his chest when he sees Jong Han with Ji Hyo's aunt.

They're both sitting in the wooden bench in the porch and the woman is talking about something towards Jong Han, who is obediently answering.

He hastily enters the low gate of their fence and stops right in front of them.

"What are you doing here?", he asks.

"Is that the way to greet an adult right in feont of a child?", Mi Ran asks, lifting her cold gaze up at him.

"Oppa.", Jong Han greets him.

"Go inside, Jong Han-ah.", he says, not taking his gaze from the woman in front of him.

Jong Han immediately obeys and runs inside the house.

"What are you doing here?", he asks again.

Mi Ran still has this insincere smile worn across her face. "I gotta admit that I admireyour perseverance. But I gotta tell you that in the end, all the efforts that you're doing will be useless."

"How dare you get other people involved with this.", he says through clenched teeth.

She shrugs nonchalantly. "I had to. I know well enough that just like Ji Hyo, your stubborness will just make you stand still if I direct the blow to you. But seeing others suffer for your sake is exactly the thing that makes you waver."

He clenches his fists. That is all he could do to stop himself from hurting this woman. She knows what her doing so well that she could be dubbed as the most evil villain Jong Kook had ever known.

"Our being around Ji Hyo isn't doing anything bad with her school. Why can'tyou just leave us be?"

"But it's not just about that, dear.", she answers, her sweet words filled with poisonous bitterness. "Ever since she found friends like you, she started getting even more stubborn. She started acting on her own accord, disobeying my rules, sneaking out behind my back."

"That's because you've been chaining her ever since. She should be given the freedom to choose what to do and what's not to do."

"Uh-uh. That can't be. And there's this thing about you and Ji Hyo.", Mi Ran pauses as if to see the look in his face.

He could not hide the surprise in his eyes when he realized that she does know about their relationship.

"Yes. I know about it. And that has also been bothering me. I mean, what are you expecting to happen? That you could really be together?"

The question hit Jong Kook right in the gut. Could they really be together, considering how high Ji Hyo could reach if she tries so hard and how he would stay in this low, struggling world despite his efforts?

He has been comfortable with Ji Hyo that he sometimes forget that she's the top students of their school, she has her own successful life laid out right in front of her. He sometimes forget that they're within two different worlds, only meeting in the middle by chance.

And maybe that is all there is to them. By chance. Maybe these are all just a play of fate, where they're just meant to meet only to be separated forever.

His chain of miserable thoughts are cut off by Mi Ran's chuckle.

"You kids. You all think you're mature enough to decide for yourselves.", she says and then pat Jong Kook in the back. "You're too young to face these kind of stuff, dear. Nothing is in your control. It would be better if you give it a rest so you won't waste any energy."