CERTAMEN (2/?)
Title: Certamen (2/?)
Author: qrn
Character: Hoya
Rating: PG
Summary: It takes more than perfect scores to stay in the game.
Author's Notes: Finally an update~~! Sorry guys, have been juggling with my new job & so many stuff these past few weeks... So I decided to make each chapter of this series around 2000 words (or less) from now on, since the last one was a bit too wordful XD Anyway, more mysteries are unravelled in this chapter. Feedbacks & comments are welcome, as always. Enjoy!
Hoya prefers to walk home alone. Back at Goong-Ji, he always walked home alone. It didn't matter how many friends he had, or how many people suggested to catch the bus together, walking home alone is much better as it's a nice way to end a noisy school day.
So when Dongwoon and Chulyong offered to walk home together (he realised that they can get very clingy), he said no. Since his house is only ten minutes away, he thought it was better if they didn't come with him.
As he walks past the school oval (where there are students playing soccer), he wonders if he's going to enjoy his remaining high school years. While he's made a few acquaintances on the first day, he's not sure if he'll like it as much as he liked Goong-Ji.
But there's still one thing stuck in his mind (as a matter of fact, he's been thinking about it during the rest of the day): the supposedly 'bad things' Chulyong had mentioned earlier. Hoya has a feeling it has something to do with the dance club, which Hyosung (and the others as well, pretty much) seemed to be very secretive about.
What could it be?
The one thing about Hoya is that when he concentrates, he concentrates hard--therefore, he doesn't notice the soccer ball heading in his direction nor the loud yell from the distance, "Watch out!" The ball hits him successfully on the head (ow!), and he falls on his knees. Grunting and rubbing his head in pain, he mutters curses under his breath. Whoever kicked the ball must be a really good player, as he swears he's half-blind right now.
"We're so sorry!" The person standing in front of him grabs the soccer ball and reaches out his hand. "Are you okay?"
Hoya blinks his eyes several times, then looks up; the guy has a genuine, apologetic face and messy, spiky hair, with glistening tanned skin drenched in sweat. Okay, maybe I'm not going blind.
"Are you okay? Can you stand up?"
Hoya brushes off his hand. "I'm fine, I guess," he mumbles as he stands up slowly.
"I'm really sorry," the guy says again. "Woohyun can sometimes be such a lame kicker." He turns around to the oval and raises an OK sign at his friends. "He's okay!"
Hoya frowns. Woohyun? It has only been five hours since the guy rudely kicked him out of his seat, and now he just made him angry again. So he refuses to look at Woohyun, who's standing near the goalpost, and just keeps his eyes down on the ground.
"He really sucks at aiming," the guy grins playfully. "By the way, you're the new kid in Year 10 everyone's been talking about, right? Woohyun's classmate?"
Hoya nods, occasionally rubbing his head (he swears, a big bruise is gonna appear soon). "Yeah. I'm Hoya."
"I'm Jang Dongwoo, from 11-A. Do you wanna join us for a quick game?"
With Woohyun? No way! Hoya shakes his head. "I'm good, thanks. I gotta head home."
But the guy doesn't give up easily. "Come on, just for a while."
Back at the oval, Woohyun and the other students are yelling for him to hurry up. "Dongwoo, give us the ball back! What's taking you so long?"
"It's fun," Dongwoo grins again (to Hoya, he looks stupid with that expression). "Come on."
"No, it's cool. Really." Hoya starts walking away. "I've got a lot of stuff to do, anyway."
"Okay," Dongwoo says. "Well, we're always here after school, so... you're welcome to join any day." With that, the game resumes and Hoya is free to go home.
"How was school?" Dad asks. He and Mum are sitting in the living room, reading newspaper and watching TV.
Hoya walks upstairs without stopping by the living room. "Good."
“Were the people nice?”
Instantly Woohyun’s face flashes into Hoya’s mind. “Not really.”
Dad frowns. “Did you make lots of friends?”
“Yeah…” Hoya trails off.
They look at each other, unsure. “How did you find the classes? Hard? Was the homeroom teacher strict?” His mother has this habit of asking a lot of questions at once without waiting for any answer.
Hoya shrugs in disinterest, “Meh,” and closes the door of his room.
After he changes out of his uniform, he take a seat in front of the desk and opens his laptop. His mind is still pre-occupied with the mysterious “bad” thing that everyone at that school seems to be hiding. Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that they’re all very competitive with each other.
But what could it be?
He types ‘Sang-In Foreign Academy’ in the search box, browsing through forums and blogs (general search on Daum can sometimes gives you too many results) in hope of finding some answers. Two, three minutes pass-and he still can’t get any clues. He clicks his tongue; the tension and curiosity frustrate him. He continues inspecting the next pages of the search results (there are about 1,000,000, including from international websites), carefully skimming every line.
“Alumni page, testimonials, foreign relations…” he recites with a bored sigh, glancing at the repeated search results. “Club members… huh?” On the eleventh page, his eyes catch a line that he hasn’t seen before. Maybe…?
He proceeds to click the link, which leads to a blog with no headline (that’s odd)-just a plain, red-and-black banner. There’s a list of topics on the page (some highlighted in bold, some aren’t) with interesting titles:
Sang-In: The school from hell.
High competition encouraged not only among students, but also academic staff.
Nation's Top 1% graduates-is it worth risking our lives?
Deaths and scandals.
The last topic, in particular, catches Hoya's interest.
Deaths?
"This is it!" Hoya mutters to himself in shock, hovering the mouse to highlight the link--which, unfortunately, can only be accessed by privately. "Fuck!" Just when I'm close to finding out the truth... Not giving up yet, he picks up his mobile phone and dials a number. "Jiwoo-yah, where are you?"
The voice on the other line replied lazily, "...home, 'sup?"
"I need you to come over right now. It's important."
"Why? What happened?"
"Just come!"
In less than ten minutes, he is already standing in Hoya's room.
"What is it?" Jiwoo frowns, scratching his messy hair.
"You took quite a while," Hoya comments, "even though you only live next door."
"I was taking a nap."
"Anyway," Hoya motions his cousin to look at the laptop screen. "I need your help with this."
"You could've asked more nicely," Jiwoo mumbles (quite loudly, but Hoya pretends to ignore it. "What is it?"
"You know Sang-In, right? The school I go to now."
"So I heard," Jiwoo tilts his head. "My mum was talking over the phone with your mum the other night, and she told me how ecstatic Aunt sounded... What about it, though?" Hoya doesn't need to tell him to come closer in order to get a better look on the opened blog page. "Deaths...?" His eyes widen, scanning each line. "I know that Sang-In is very competitive, but..." he pauses. "Hoya, what is this website--"
"I need you to hack it," Hoya cuts straight to the point. "The topics can only be accessed by members."
"...Are you sure?" Jiwoo asks in doubt. "I mean, it might not be--"
"Just do it," Hoya says, clearing his throat. "I need to know why they're acting weird."
They? Who? Jiwoo is about to ask more questions, but he quickly takes his seat in front of the laptop and does what he's told. Hoya sits on his bed, watching his cousin open a black screen and type foreign letters and codes. If there is one thing Hoya envies about him, it's his computer ability. Although they're the same age (well, Hoya is older by a few days), Jiwoo possesses outstanding IT skills comparable to those of college professors. They've always been close since they were little, helping each other out.
After ten minutes of illegal action, Jiwoo turns around and grins at him. "Done."
Hoya jumps from the bed suddenly, pulling Jiwoo into a hug. "You're awesome!" He clicks the topic link, and it leads to a page containing excerpts of interviews from anonymous sources. "'My son didn't do anything wrong... he didn't deserve such cruelty'," he starts reading the first paragraph, then pauses. "What cruelty?"
"Is he--or she--referring to the competitiveness at Sang-In?" Jiwoo asks, now engrossed in the matter as well.
"Look at this... 'Forcing him to be sleep-deprived and study everyday, to the point he got nosebleeds and nightmares... what is wrong with those people? Poor Kiwon'," Hoya frowns and stops reading. What the hell? "Jiwoo-yah, have you ever heard of these rumours before?"
"No!" Jiwoo shakes his head, looking as shocked as he is. "I didn't know about any dead students, either..."
The other interviews aren't much different: 'I have never seen such evil school', 'It was too much', 'My Hyojin could've at least made it to a decent college, but Sang-In destroyed her', and 'Nothing they did was ever good enough'.
"What does this mean--?"
"I knew there was something wrong with that school," Hoya clenches his hands into fists. "But why has this been kept in the dark...?"
"Well, obviously they have connections," Jiwoo shakes his head.
"No, I mean... even if they do... wouldn't the parents of the dead students tell these stories to their neighbours?"
The two exchange anxious looks.
Suddenly Mrs. Lee's voice is heard from downstairs. "Hoya, you've got a guest!"
Who the heck...? Dumbfounded, Hoya leaves Jiwoo in his room and walks to the front door...
...to find an unexpected guest.
The figure in front of him, still dressed in school uniform, stares back at him.
Kim Sunggyu.
Author: qrn
Character: Hoya
Rating: PG
Summary: It takes more than perfect scores to stay in the game.
Author's Notes: Finally an update~~! Sorry guys, have been juggling with my new job & so many stuff these past few weeks... So I decided to make each chapter of this series around 2000 words (or less) from now on, since the last one was a bit too wordful XD Anyway, more mysteries are unravelled in this chapter. Feedbacks & comments are welcome, as always. Enjoy!
Hoya prefers to walk home alone. Back at Goong-Ji, he always walked home alone. It didn't matter how many friends he had, or how many people suggested to catch the bus together, walking home alone is much better as it's a nice way to end a noisy school day.
So when Dongwoon and Chulyong offered to walk home together (he realised that they can get very clingy), he said no. Since his house is only ten minutes away, he thought it was better if they didn't come with him.
As he walks past the school oval (where there are students playing soccer), he wonders if he's going to enjoy his remaining high school years. While he's made a few acquaintances on the first day, he's not sure if he'll like it as much as he liked Goong-Ji.
But there's still one thing stuck in his mind (as a matter of fact, he's been thinking about it during the rest of the day): the supposedly 'bad things' Chulyong had mentioned earlier. Hoya has a feeling it has something to do with the dance club, which Hyosung (and the others as well, pretty much) seemed to be very secretive about.
What could it be?
The one thing about Hoya is that when he concentrates, he concentrates hard--therefore, he doesn't notice the soccer ball heading in his direction nor the loud yell from the distance, "Watch out!" The ball hits him successfully on the head (ow!), and he falls on his knees. Grunting and rubbing his head in pain, he mutters curses under his breath. Whoever kicked the ball must be a really good player, as he swears he's half-blind right now.
"We're so sorry!" The person standing in front of him grabs the soccer ball and reaches out his hand. "Are you okay?"
Hoya blinks his eyes several times, then looks up; the guy has a genuine, apologetic face and messy, spiky hair, with glistening tanned skin drenched in sweat. Okay, maybe I'm not going blind.
"Are you okay? Can you stand up?"
Hoya brushes off his hand. "I'm fine, I guess," he mumbles as he stands up slowly.
"I'm really sorry," the guy says again. "Woohyun can sometimes be such a lame kicker." He turns around to the oval and raises an OK sign at his friends. "He's okay!"
Hoya frowns. Woohyun? It has only been five hours since the guy rudely kicked him out of his seat, and now he just made him angry again. So he refuses to look at Woohyun, who's standing near the goalpost, and just keeps his eyes down on the ground.
"He really sucks at aiming," the guy grins playfully. "By the way, you're the new kid in Year 10 everyone's been talking about, right? Woohyun's classmate?"
Hoya nods, occasionally rubbing his head (he swears, a big bruise is gonna appear soon). "Yeah. I'm Hoya."
"I'm Jang Dongwoo, from 11-A. Do you wanna join us for a quick game?"
With Woohyun? No way! Hoya shakes his head. "I'm good, thanks. I gotta head home."
But the guy doesn't give up easily. "Come on, just for a while."
Back at the oval, Woohyun and the other students are yelling for him to hurry up. "Dongwoo, give us the ball back! What's taking you so long?"
"It's fun," Dongwoo grins again (to Hoya, he looks stupid with that expression). "Come on."
"No, it's cool. Really." Hoya starts walking away. "I've got a lot of stuff to do, anyway."
"Okay," Dongwoo says. "Well, we're always here after school, so... you're welcome to join any day." With that, the game resumes and Hoya is free to go home.
"How was school?" Dad asks. He and Mum are sitting in the living room, reading newspaper and watching TV.
Hoya walks upstairs without stopping by the living room. "Good."
“Were the people nice?”
Instantly Woohyun’s face flashes into Hoya’s mind. “Not really.”
Dad frowns. “Did you make lots of friends?”
“Yeah…” Hoya trails off.
They look at each other, unsure. “How did you find the classes? Hard? Was the homeroom teacher strict?” His mother has this habit of asking a lot of questions at once without waiting for any answer.
Hoya shrugs in disinterest, “Meh,” and closes the door of his room.
After he changes out of his uniform, he take a seat in front of the desk and opens his laptop. His mind is still pre-occupied with the mysterious “bad” thing that everyone at that school seems to be hiding. Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that they’re all very competitive with each other.
But what could it be?
He types ‘Sang-In Foreign Academy’ in the search box, browsing through forums and blogs (general search on Daum can sometimes gives you too many results) in hope of finding some answers. Two, three minutes pass-and he still can’t get any clues. He clicks his tongue; the tension and curiosity frustrate him. He continues inspecting the next pages of the search results (there are about 1,000,000, including from international websites), carefully skimming every line.
“Alumni page, testimonials, foreign relations…” he recites with a bored sigh, glancing at the repeated search results. “Club members… huh?” On the eleventh page, his eyes catch a line that he hasn’t seen before. Maybe…?
He proceeds to click the link, which leads to a blog with no headline (that’s odd)-just a plain, red-and-black banner. There’s a list of topics on the page (some highlighted in bold, some aren’t) with interesting titles:
Sang-In: The school from hell.
High competition encouraged not only among students, but also academic staff.
Nation's Top 1% graduates-is it worth risking our lives?
Deaths and scandals.
The last topic, in particular, catches Hoya's interest.
Deaths?
"This is it!" Hoya mutters to himself in shock, hovering the mouse to highlight the link--which, unfortunately, can only be accessed by privately. "Fuck!" Just when I'm close to finding out the truth... Not giving up yet, he picks up his mobile phone and dials a number. "Jiwoo-yah, where are you?"
The voice on the other line replied lazily, "...home, 'sup?"
"I need you to come over right now. It's important."
"Why? What happened?"
"Just come!"
In less than ten minutes, he is already standing in Hoya's room.
"What is it?" Jiwoo frowns, scratching his messy hair.
"You took quite a while," Hoya comments, "even though you only live next door."
"I was taking a nap."
"Anyway," Hoya motions his cousin to look at the laptop screen. "I need your help with this."
"You could've asked more nicely," Jiwoo mumbles (quite loudly, but Hoya pretends to ignore it. "What is it?"
"You know Sang-In, right? The school I go to now."
"So I heard," Jiwoo tilts his head. "My mum was talking over the phone with your mum the other night, and she told me how ecstatic Aunt sounded... What about it, though?" Hoya doesn't need to tell him to come closer in order to get a better look on the opened blog page. "Deaths...?" His eyes widen, scanning each line. "I know that Sang-In is very competitive, but..." he pauses. "Hoya, what is this website--"
"I need you to hack it," Hoya cuts straight to the point. "The topics can only be accessed by members."
"...Are you sure?" Jiwoo asks in doubt. "I mean, it might not be--"
"Just do it," Hoya says, clearing his throat. "I need to know why they're acting weird."
They? Who? Jiwoo is about to ask more questions, but he quickly takes his seat in front of the laptop and does what he's told. Hoya sits on his bed, watching his cousin open a black screen and type foreign letters and codes. If there is one thing Hoya envies about him, it's his computer ability. Although they're the same age (well, Hoya is older by a few days), Jiwoo possesses outstanding IT skills comparable to those of college professors. They've always been close since they were little, helping each other out.
After ten minutes of illegal action, Jiwoo turns around and grins at him. "Done."
Hoya jumps from the bed suddenly, pulling Jiwoo into a hug. "You're awesome!" He clicks the topic link, and it leads to a page containing excerpts of interviews from anonymous sources. "'My son didn't do anything wrong... he didn't deserve such cruelty'," he starts reading the first paragraph, then pauses. "What cruelty?"
"Is he--or she--referring to the competitiveness at Sang-In?" Jiwoo asks, now engrossed in the matter as well.
"Look at this... 'Forcing him to be sleep-deprived and study everyday, to the point he got nosebleeds and nightmares... what is wrong with those people? Poor Kiwon'," Hoya frowns and stops reading. What the hell? "Jiwoo-yah, have you ever heard of these rumours before?"
"No!" Jiwoo shakes his head, looking as shocked as he is. "I didn't know about any dead students, either..."
The other interviews aren't much different: 'I have never seen such evil school', 'It was too much', 'My Hyojin could've at least made it to a decent college, but Sang-In destroyed her', and 'Nothing they did was ever good enough'.
"What does this mean--?"
"I knew there was something wrong with that school," Hoya clenches his hands into fists. "But why has this been kept in the dark...?"
"Well, obviously they have connections," Jiwoo shakes his head.
"No, I mean... even if they do... wouldn't the parents of the dead students tell these stories to their neighbours?"
The two exchange anxious looks.
Suddenly Mrs. Lee's voice is heard from downstairs. "Hoya, you've got a guest!"
Who the heck...? Dumbfounded, Hoya leaves Jiwoo in his room and walks to the front door...
...to find an unexpected guest.
The figure in front of him, still dressed in school uniform, stares back at him.
Kim Sunggyu.