Hamartia

<Hubris>

-03-

The track field smelled like flowers. There weren’t any flowers, though: it was just a trick of the season.

As Jin Nana’s arm was still injured he was exempt from physical activities. But he couldn’t be left alone in the classroom, so he was asked to be out in the field.

Nana didn’t want to associate with the smell of nonexistent flowers, the sunlight, nor the other students in his class. He didn’t have any particular reason to be angry but was still annoyed.

He wanted to get away from everything, but the classroom door had been locked when they headed out to P.E. Nana couldn’t go into the secluded gym storage room either: somebody could figure out where he was going. Even if the storage room wasn’t his private space, it was a place that only he knew. He wanted to keep it that way. Nana headed over to a bench under the shade.

It was pure coincidence that he chose to look up right then and there. Nana didn’t move his head for any particular reason, but his eyes caught Ha Yeonjae. Nana wasn’t too sure if their eyes had met, but he had seen Ha Yeonjae and Yeonjae had looked at Nana.

Yeonjae waved his hand from the classroom window on the second floor. It was the arm with the cast. When Nana didn’t respond to his wave, he mouthed,

“Hi.”

Nana refused to respond. Regardless of the fact that he wouldn’t hear it, Yeonjae was in the middle of class. Nana just looked at Yeonjae’s eyes, then turned around. Before Nana could look elsewhere, he waved again.

Nana sat down on the bench and looked at his arm.

‘Are you okay?’

The voice he heard on the day he hurt his arm still rang clear in his head.

That day, Nana knew that Ha Yeonjae was coming down from upstairs. He could hear his voice.

“So when’d you get to know Jin Nana?”

To be more exact, Nana heard that friend’s voice. Ha Yeonjae didn’t respond to the question.

He was just about to turn to avoid Ha Yeonjae, but he briefly locked eyes with him through the stair banisters. Nana didn’t want to look like he was running away from him, so he continued to go the way he originally planned.

He should’ve gone the other way, even if it looked like he was running away from him. Because Nana was so engrossed in the conversation he was eavesdropping on, he didn’t see the other student and bumped into them. As he stumbled, he could see Ha Yeonjae’s eyes grow wider. Then he immediately ran down and grabbed Nana’s wrist.

Yeonjae was so hurried in grabbing him that he was standing precariously on the edge of the stairs.

“You okay?”

Ha Yeonjae laughed as he asked if he was okay. The hand holding onto him was just as warm as before. Nana hated that hand. He hated Ha Yeonjae smiling at him. He didn’t want to get any help from him. He hated how he was relying on Ha Yeonjae at this very moment.

Nana pushed Yeonjae’s hand away. He didn’t just push it away: as he fell backwards, he also grabbed his hand.

You should feel some pain, too.

Nana didn’t care if that pain was physical or emotional. He just wanted Yeonjae to hurt. It didn’t matter if Nana himself got hurt. He didn’t have anyone who would care about him anyway.

But he didn’t know that he would get this injured. Nana felt like his arm was going to fall off in pain, and it really did kind of fall off: he broke a bone.

“What’re you doing?”

The voice came from behind him, but Nana didn’t turn around. In response, Ha Yeonjae walked around the bench to sit next to him. How did he get here in the middle of class? Nana was curious but didn’t ask.

“Shouldn’t you be in class?”

Then the question that lingered in Nana’s head came out of Ha Yeonjae’s mouth instead.

To answer his question, Nana held up his injured arm and pointed at the field. Looking at the students in their P.E uniforms and kicking a ball, Yeonjae nodded his head.

Nana shifted his sight to look at Yeonjae’s arm. The cast on Nana’s arm was green. The cast on Yeonjae’s arm was blue. The arm sling holding up his cast was void of any hospital logo.

That day, they headed to the emergency room in the school nurse’s car but Ha Yeonjae wasn’t there. Yeonjae’s primary doctor and the school nurse seemed to be deep in conversation. Nana already knew the thin, sharp-tempered middle-aged woman.

“It’s been a while.”

Nana glared at the doctor who spoke to him. Even when she didn’t get a response, she didn’t seem to get offended. She just turned away and headed to the exit of the emergency room. When he looked towards where she was heading, he could see Ha Yeonjae getting into a car being supported by men wearing black suits. Seeing this, the doctor rushed over to the car.

Even as his arm throbbed in pain, Nana found himself curious at the scene.

Both of them were obviously in pain as they headed over to the hospital. Nana’s arm ached to the point that cold sweat was dripping from his forehead. But arriving at the hospital and heading back without receiving treatment seemed strange. Wasn’t the order of events all messed up? As Ha Yeonjae’s primary doctor, it was right to put his treatment first, right?

“What are you doing after school?”

Nana furrowed his brows in annoyance as he was asked such a friendly question.

“Nothing you need to know about.”

He felt like it would be better to just sit under the sun than sit next to Yeonjae, so he stood up from the bench. This time, just like before, Yeonjae didn’t hold onto Nana. He just watched Nana’s back as it grew smaller. Nana could feel his eyes on him. But he refused to turn around.

“Nana!”

Nana paused at the sound of his name being called. He turned to where the voice came from, and saw a few students sitting under the shade of the tree. They were the other students who were sitting out of the P.E exercise. One of the female students was waving her hand.

“Sit with us over here!”

The tone was friendly, but this was coming from a student he had never talked to before. She waved to Nana, but her eyes were looking somewhere behind him–around where Ha Yeonjae was sitting on the bench.

The corner of his lips turned down. The question he heard the most since school started was the following:

“Are you close with Ha Yeonjae?”

Even if it wasn’t that exact question, everyone who talked to Nana always asked about Ha Yeonjae. Nobody ever came over because of Nana himself.

Nana didn’t go towards the other students and turned towards the school building. Even if the door was locked, he headed over to the classroom. It was better to stand quietly in the hallway than that.

–

“Jin Nana. Why’d you change so much?”

All of the people in his life labeled as his ‘friends’ left after asking that question. Nana himself admitted that he’d changed. However, it wasn’t like he had a good personality to begin with.

“You know me?”

When he threw that question back, their faces would turn red and they would fume and leave. Even when his friends left, he didn’t try to stop them. It wasn’t like Nana had any lingering attachment for his friends.

Nana had always been popular since he was young. He took advantage of the girls who would seek his attention, and laughed at the boys who would angrily pick fights with him. They just didn’t know because he didn’t show all of his personality outright. He had never had a great personality to begin with.

Nana always assumed he was born with this horrible attitude. Neither his mother nor his father had ever screamed or yelled at each other in front of him, so it wasn’t like this was a learned attitude, either.

But to others, it looked like he just suddenly shifted one day. Everything he had kept hidden well within himself had started to come up to the surface. Nana remembered very well when this started. This was something he wanted to forget, but he couldn’t. This was the moment his life had started falling apart.

On a very normal weekend morning, Nana saw his father’s phone. This was it.

Nana always thought that there was a small pocket inside of him. He put all of his negative emotions in that little pocket.

And when he learned about his father’s extramarital affair, that pocket started to rip open, bit by bit.

His mother, who was born and raised in a peaceful household, just kept smiling without knowing anything. His father was the same. They always laughed. It was a quiet, peaceful household. His mother and father looked to be the perfect couple. But to learn that this was all an act…

Every time Nana saw his father’s face, he wanted to throw up. He couldn’t swallow his food. Pretending to be a good husband, a good father. Nana’s anger boiled hot in his stomach, but he didn’t know where or who to talk to.

Nana had never thought of the people around him as friends. It wasn’t like he had an adult he trusted, either. He tried to calm himself down, but as time continued to pass, his anger grew as sharp as a thorn. And in the end, that anger ripped itself out of his little emotional pocket.

As soon as his rage erupted, he couldn’t seem to control it. Nana’s behavior towards the people around him started to shift.

Hey, I heard you got a girlfriend!

Is she pretty?

What about her friends? Hey, introduce me to them too.

Going to school was annoying. No matter where they were, the boys were loud and annoying with conversations about girls. That girl in whatever grade is really pretty. That school has a lot of pretty girls.

When these boys grew slightly older, they started comparing their girlfriends with their friends’, and the boys without girlfriends desperately started looking for a girlfriend of their own.

If it was just simple curiosity regarding the opposite gender, Nana probably wouldn’t have gone so far. But the other students kept adding love into everything. For any kind of special day, letters and presents with hearts drawn all over them kept going around. They told each other that they loved them. Nana hated seeing this.

First, he started making eye contact with the girl. When their eyes met, he just smiled. It wasn’t anything special. He just looked them in the eye and smiled, and they abandoned their boyfriends and came running to his side. Nana found this maddening, but absolutely laughable.

Look at this. This isn’t love. There wasn’t any of that in the first place.

There was retaliation. Nana was called trash and his upperclassmen sometimes beat him up. But even that was laughable. Every time someone beat him up, their girlfriend would support Nana.

“Stop, please stop. I was the one that was wrong.”

Whenever the girl clung to their boyfriend, the boy’s foot would stop kicking at him. Nana would just smile.

“Fuck off.”

When he would say that, the girl would stop trying to stop her boyfriend and look at him. Are you surprised that I said that? Did you honestly think that I was going to be nice to you?

The boy would always keep punching and kicking at him. Nana would let himself get hit for a few more punches. Then he would also start hitting back. That always made him feel better.

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By the time Nana got used to hurting others and getting into fights, he was completely alone. He himself admitted that he was messed up. But the fact that he was slowly falling deeper into the abyss was just funny to him.

Dad always called Nana his “beloved son”. Look at the state of your beloved son.

But regardless of him coming home with his face beaten in, his father stopped coming home one day.

And instead, a strange boy came into his life.

xx