Superstar From Age 0

Chapter 590

It was mid-August, a sultry time of the year.

The barbecue restaurant was full of customers, each table buzzing with their own stories.

This table was no exception.

“How many days do you have left?”

“165 days.”

The man with the unusually short hair shrugged his shoulders and gulped down some soju, amid the giggles of his friends.

“That’s a lot less than before.”

“Right? It feels like it was just yesterday when it was 300 days. Doesn’t time fly by?”

“No way. Time is different when you’re in the army and when you’re outside. It’s X slow there and X fast here.”

The veterans laughed out loud.

“But now that you’re a sergeant… Oh, wait, you’re not?”

“This bastard is still a corporal.”

“Wow, you have it tough.”

It was a must-do course whenever he came back from leave.

His friends who had finished their military service teased the man who was still a soldier.

“But you still look good, don’t you?”

“I thought you were lying… Do you still get good food these days?”

“Your condition looks better than when you were here. Why don’t you just stay there?”

“…Do you want me to die?”

The man raised a chopstick as if to stab them, and his friends burst into laughter.

“The food is good, the sleep is good, the life is regular, the health is good, and there’s no stress… X. I can’t believe what I’m saying.”

“Exactly! Are you sure you’re not lying?”

“When I first heard this story, I thought this bastard was crazy.”

“Anyway, even if that’s the case, I’m not staying there. You bastards!”

Some new meat was placed on the grill. The hot heat and the air conditioner wind mixed together. The cold soju and beer went down the throat.

“Ah. You’re doing well these days. Barca B!”

“Yeah. Park Jio is doing well, right?”

“They can’t get promoted since they’re in the second league, so they have no choice but to go to Barca, but can they do it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Go! Park Jio can!”

“Will he play in the World Cup?”

“Isn’t he exempt from the army?”

The conversation went from everyday life to soccer, and from soccer back to the army.

“What about that private? Is there anything new with him?”

“Oh, that career-like private?”

Everyone laughed at the word career.

“Yeah. How is he? He’s a private first class now, right?”

“He’s the same as always. Nice and good at work.”

The man recalled his junior who had become a private first class. Then he laughed. His friends looked at him with curious faces.

“What?”

“No, he got assigned to a weird task.”

“What task?”

“Care for the troubled soldiers.”

The man’s words made his friends blink their eyes.

“…That’s a job I want to pray for his soul. Did he… get picked?”

“No, but don’t they usually assign that to private first class?”

“That’s true.”

The man smiled at his friends’ reactions.

He understood. They would usually react like this when they heard this.

“It happened like this…”

The man remembered.

“As I told you before, he’s really handsome.”

“…Was he?”

“Who knows. Why would I remember how handsome a guy is?”

“Agreed.”

They shrugged their shoulders and ate some meat from the grill.

“…Do you want me to stop talking?”

“No. Go on. Go on.”

“Shut up then.”

“…Anyway, he’s X handsome. He could be an actor. But you know that sergeant bastard I cursed before.”

“Oh. I remember that.”

“Right. You didn’t curse that bastard today, did you?”

“Did he finish his service?”

“Not yet.”

Then why?

They recalled that the man used to swear at the sergeant every time they met after he came back from leave, but he was quiet today. They guessed in their own way.

“Is he being careful because it’s his last year?”

“…He didn’t look like a bastard who would think that way.”

They nodded their heads at one friend’s words. The man smiled as if he was refreshed.

“He’s totally quiet now. X quiet. It’s like heaven.”

“Oh. You were right!”

“But it’s not because of his last year.”

“…You were wrong.”

“But what does that have to do with the private?”

“That’s right.”

“Ah. The private is really handsome.”

“X. You said that three times already! I get it, he’s X handsome!!”

“That’s why the sergeant bastard reacted like that too.”

…Oh.

They marveled at the man’s storytelling.

“He seemed to hold back until he got used to him,”

‘I didn’t know he could hold back?’ A friend blurted out, and the man nodded in agreement and continued.

“But one day, he started to harass him. If he did that much in front of us, how much did he do when we weren’t there?”

“…He must have been relieved to have a new victim.”

“This bastard is X bad…!”

“Hey! Listen to the end!”

The man shouted at his friends’ criticism.

“We were going to do something, but it ended before we could act.”

“…What?”

“He harassed him for two days.”

Two days?

Of course, the person in question would be miserable for a day or two, but the others blinked their eyes in a shorter time than expected.

“From the third day, he seemed strangely depressed, and it looked like he was still tormenting him, but I felt a weird sense of weakness from him.”

“…What do you mean?”

“And from the fifth day, he became completely normal.”

“…The private?”

“The sergeant.”

…???

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about at all.”

“What I mean is, he went back to normal after tormenting the private for two days, no, five days.”

“By normal, you mean… just being a jerk?”

The man shook his head.

“No, he became normal! He stopped being a jerk! He did his own work! He didn’t bother anyone! He apologized when he bumped into someone!”

“…He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would have such a normal mindset?”

“That’s what I want to say! It still gives me chills to think about it! I heard an apology from that bastard!!”

The man gulped down his beer.

“So our squad was in chaos. We thought he had gone crazy and became normal. We thought this was going to blow up bigger.”

“I can see why.”

“Anyway, the sergeant became quiet and we were trembling, and this private was having a peaceful, that kind of time.”

“…Why is he the only one peaceful?”

“That will come up later. Just wait and see.”

It was a very strange story, but it was interesting.

The friends listened to the man’s words while eating meat.

“A few days later, a new guy transferred to our squad. He was a guy who got into a fight with his senior at his previous unit and got transferred out.”

“…Is military life really okay?”

“…Maybe he’s gone crazy too.”

The man opened his mouth with a resigned expression.

“That’s what we felt at the time. Except for the sergeant and this private. But the new guy was a corporal and there was only one private, so this private got tormented again.”

“What did he do wrong in his previous life…”

“We thought so too. What did this kind private do wrong in his previous life to get stuck with that guy again, when will that crazy corporal cause trouble, we watched nervously. Of course, we also worried about when the quiet sergeant would explode.”

The friends filled their glasses with soju and beer to the brim. It seemed like the peaceful military life he mentioned earlier was a lie, a self-brainwashing.

“That corporal was tough from the start. The radar who was trained by the sergeant said so. He’ll blow up in three days. And three days passed.”

Someone swallowed his saliva.

The man opened his mouth.

“The corporal came to us and said, let’s get along well, and gave us some choco pies.”

“…Are they not laced with drugs?”

“We thought so too! So no one touched them, but this peaceful private thanked him and ate a choco pie. He was fine. So we ate them too. They were just choco pies.”

“…And then?”

“Nothing happened. To him or to us.”

The friends were about to say something about the anticlimactic ending, when one of them asked.

“What did this private do? You said the sergeant and the corporal were with him.”

The man nodded.

“Yeah. They both changed like that, so I was curious and asked him, this private. He said he studied a little bit of human psychology.”

“Wow…”

“He said he didn’t do it formally, but he saw a lot of different types of personalities and learned how to deal with them. That’s what worked on the sergeant and the corporal!”

“Is that it? My child has changed?”

The friends nodded their heads as if they were convinced by the name of the program that had changed the problematic child (actually the parent) that had been broadcasted before.

“But they’re adults, so they wouldn’t change so dramatically, right?”

“We thought so too, so we asked him, but he said he didn’t know that much. He just said his words got through to other people well.”

He added the power of the Evil Library to that, which was a secret only known to Private Lee Seo-jun.

He tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t help it when they cursed his parents. But he couldn’t just leave the squad members who would suffer from the jerk’s behavior. So he used the power of the Evil Library to change their personalities completely.

…The power of good didn’t listen well.

“You believed that?”

“Since then, the sergeant and the corporal didn’t cause any trouble, no, they became very normal, so we had to believe it. It doesn’t matter what the cause is, as long as it’s peaceful. Military life is.”

The sincerity in the man’s words made everyone nod their heads.

“So he was the only one peaceful. This private.”

“He knew he wouldn’t blow up.”

“Then what’s the story about this private taking care of the interest soldier?”

Ah. That.

The man put some fresh pork belly on the hot grill and opened his mouth.

“Our squad had the sergeant’s incident and the troublemaker corporal coming in, so the officers’ attention was a bit focused on us. But nothing happened as expected, so they asked the squad leader. The squad leader told them about this private.”

Ah.

They seemed to know just by hearing that.

“They took care of the other squad members too.”

“Of course. There are more than 450 people locked up together, how many problematic people do you think there would be?”

“A person who can handle the interest soldiers… He must be a real blessing to the officers.”

The man nodded.

“And it worked well. Our unit is totally peaceful now. The food is delicious, the sleep is good, no one has any stress.”

“What about the nail?”

“This bastard?”

The friends burst into laughter at the sight of the man’s sudden outburst.

“Do you want to get in trouble by nailing him? He’s going to be discharged too, right? He can’t fix the interest soldiers who come after him. He’s a corporal now… When is his discharge date?”

“His discharge date is July 14th next year.”

“Wow. You even remember the corporal’s discharge date?”

The man spat out a hollow laugh, as if he couldn’t believe it himself.

“Our unit’s attention is all on him. The officers just wish he was nailed. I’m glad I’m discharged earlier than him, his juniors are worried about the interest soldiers who will come in after he’s discharged.”

“That makes sense.”

“I would too.”

The friends who were drunk nodded their heads repeatedly.

It was a military story, so they doubted how much they should believe, but, well, it was fun.

“Hey. Then other units would be interested too, right?”

“That’s right. There are a lot of places with interest soldiers.”

“Are they not sending this corporal?”

“They can’t send him! Our corporal!”

“Do you think their battalion commander would let him go? They would come from there, the interest soldiers. And they would get treated by this corporal and go back.”

“Transfer in and out is not that easy, is it?”

“It affects the promotion. If it doesn’t work, make it work. Don’t you know?”

“Oh. Then it’s different.”

They all nodded their heads at the same time.

There was nothing more important than promotion for the officers.

***

The man and his friends who had eaten and talked enough came out of the store. They all frowned at the high humidity and the sultry wind.

“The closest house from here is his house, right?”

The second round place was decided right away, and they all started walking.

Two friends bought alcohol and snacks at the convenience store, while the man and one friend waited in front of it.

The man who was looking at his phone muttered.

“Should I watch this…”

“A movie? You’re not interested in movies.”

“I started watching them because this corporal recommended them to me. He’s a movie buff. He knows everything from old movies to the latest ones.”

“Really? What are you going to watch?”

“This. Hwa.”

On the man’s phone screen, there was an article that said [Independent film ‘Hwa’, opening tomorrow!].

“Oh, this. The one with Lee Seo-jun. Come to think of it, wasn’t that corporal’s name similar?”

“It’s the same. Lee Seo-jun.”

“Lee Seo-jun…”

The friend who was thinking for a moment opened his mouth.

“Are all the people named Lee Seo-jun handsome? Should I name my son Lee Seo-jun when he’s born? To make him handsome.”

The man who knew both the actor Lee Seo-jun’s face and the corporal Lee Seo-jun’s face looked at his friend’s face and blurted out without knowing.

“…It would be hard…”

Hahahaha!!

The two friends who came out of the convenience store heard that conversation and laughed as if they were going to collapse, saying ‘This bastard is serious’. The Lee friend also shouted.

“It’s a joke! Don’t answer me seriously with that face, you bastard!”