Mi-Sun leads Sa-Ook to the hallway before Sa-Ook gains the heart to shake off her hand from his, pulling it into his pocket. Mi-Sun had managed to drag Sa-Ook all the way to the first floor, near a back exit of the school. She looks Sa-Ook up and down and sighs.
"Why do you keep fighting these kids? You're going to get in serious trouble one day." Mi-Sun says, worried. Sa-Ook felt a swarm of questions enter his brain. The circumstances of everything were dreadfully confusing. To his memory, he was a loser in highschool, and that was the extent of it.
But, to think of it, Sa-Ook couldn't remember anything clearly past the age of 25. What is happening? Who is Maroon? Why are these delinquents picking a fight with me? My current body is a scrawny, unkept, hormonal teenager. What is threatening about that?
Mi-Sun nervously glances around, seemingly to make sure no one's close enough to listen before tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear and nervously asking.
"H-how do you know Ji-Hoon?" She says. Sa-Ook's eyes narrow, and his blank expression becomes more distant.
"I don't. Somehow, though, he seemed to know me." He says. She shakes her head.
"Well, that's to be expected." She says flatly.
'What the fuck does that mean?' Sa-Ook wonders, given no further elaboration. Sa-Ook hides his confusion, but refuses to answer. Mi-Sun stands there awkwardly, looking up at him before turning the other way around.
"C'mon, let's head back." She mutters awkwardly. "Your mother is waiting."
"What does my mom have to do with this?" Sa-Ook asks. Mi-Sun pauses, and looks back at him.
"Don't you remember? Your mom told me to keep an eye on you."
"Why?" Sa-ook presses.
"How would I know? Maybe it's your little side business." She scoffs. "Hurry up."
Sa-Ook quirks an eyebrow.
"Side business?"
Mi-Sun gives Sa-Ook an exasperated look, and crosses her arms. "What? Did you stop?" She asks. "Is that why Dae-Ho and his little friends were bothering you today? How the hell did you get so strong to beat them up?"
Sa-Ook gives Mi-Sun a shrug. Mi-Sun visibly tenses, and Sa-ook could tell she was annoyed. "Can you fucking answer?" She says.
Sa-Ook smiles, his eyes narrowing. He just shrugs again and Mi-Sun sighs angrily.
As they walk back home Sa-Ook can't help but notice how Mi-Sun's agitation slowly faded into anxiety, as she continued to fidget. Sa-Ook deducted a few things from the short walk.
'Mi-Sun thinks I have some sort of business that's getting me into trouble, one I have no apparent memory or knowledge of. Also, Mi-Sun is my neighbour and had been tasked with keeping an eye on me from my Mom.'
'How they know each other? I have no idea.'
Mi-Sun pauses, just as they reach the entrance of the residential building.
"Uhm, well… Sa-Ook…" She begins.
"What?" He replies.
Her face goes beet red, from either embarrassment or shame, Sa-Ook couldn't care less.
"I-If you do still sell magic stones, could you possibly sell me one? I'll pay the full hundred thousand won…" She says quietly.
Sa-Ook's brows raise.
'Selling magic stones? Is this what this is all about? How on earth did teenage me get ahold of magic stones?'
"Yeah. I'll see if I have any left." Sa-Ook says, trying to seem as nonchalant as possible.
"Thanks…" Mi-Sun says, seeming to fall for it.
The second that Sa-Ook arrived home he rushed to his bedroom, scanning anywhere that he could've hid magic stones.
"To think, I would be illegally selling magic stones to my peers as a 17 year old, how ridiculous." Jeong Sa-Ook laughed to himself. He scoured everywhere until reaching his closet, finding a small box hidden behind some clothes. He pulled it out and could feel mana reverberating from the container.
'High quality mana stones too, from the looks of things.' Sa-Ook absently thought.
Sa-Ook opened the box and saw a large stack of bills next to 14, small but dark red mana stones. Sa-Ook felt his jaw nearly drop.
'Fucking red mana stones? How the FUCK did I get my hands on these?!'
Red mana stones were incredibly rare, worth way more than the measly 100k won that Sa-Ook had been selling them for. And clearly, he had sold a fuckton. Sa-Ook surfed over the stacks of cash he had piled in the container, well over 3 million won.
Underneath everything, there was a beat-up laptop. Sa-Ook pulled out the laptop and set it next to his bed, along with the container filled with the cash and mana stones.
Sa-Ook paced around his room, trying to remember anything related to what he had discovered. How did he not know about this? Or even remember anything slightly related to what he had been doing? He was completely dumbfounded, and why on earth would he need so much cash?
Sa-Ook's eyes narrowed on the mana stones and abruptly made up his mind. He grabbed four of the deep red stones and placed them on the ground to make a square.
"If I have so many of these stones… I may as well use them." He mutters to himself, searching for the discarded blade he used yesterday. He slit his finger tip open and let the blood fall onto the mana stone before grabbing a marker and drawing runes on his palms.
He was performing a blood rune ritual, a very primitive form for sure, but it would be all he could do. Sa-Ook wasn't even slightly hesitant knowing the risks, especially after the runes he engraved into himself from the day before making this ritual potentially lethal.
But, Sa-Ook needed to get to the bottom of whatever funny business teenage him had been up to, to confront Mi-Sun and Red Goose and figure out where the fuck all of these mana stones came from. These thoughts overwhelmed him, and he had turnt to the one comfort he always had; runes.